


a sycophantic, prophetic, socratic junkie wannabe

by Syrasha



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, F/M, Grief, Hallucinations, Non-American Sole Survivor, PTSD, Queer Protagonist, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Burn, attempted infanticide, but it gets better, let me smooch the liar, the slowest of burns, whoops back on the deacon train
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-15 01:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 58,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7200683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrasha/pseuds/Syrasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you call the stick with the bowl on the end?" she asks, and Deacon raises an eyebrow.</p><p>"Uh, you lost me, Boss."</p><p>"The thing you eat with. Like a fork or a knife but for soup," Clara says, and she's making the motion as if she's eating cereal while she's speaking, as if using the muscles will help her remember if she ever knew it.</p><p>"A spoon?" Deacon says it almost as more of a question, like he's unsure if that's the answer or not.</p><p>Clara snaps her fingers and grins widely. "Yes! Spoon!"</p><p>-</p><p>the sole survivor's first language isn't english, and deacon's first language is bullshit, so together, they make a pretty terrible team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a song in my heart

When Clara Pedersen met Nathaniel Davis, there was a music that swelled in her so loudly that she thought it would travel up from her stomach and make her heart explode. It was cliché and beautiful and left her with an aching body from which she thought she would never recover. She remembered it vividly, every detail, every way the military uniform he was wearing molded to his body.

 _The Americans bring destruction everywhere they go_ , her father had told her as she grew up, _they are no better than the Chinese at the end of the day._

He said it in that north Jutland accent, the one he never lost no matter how Clara’s mother poked fun at him.

Clara loved the accent, a reminder of a Denmark where she had a home away from home. Here, just off the German border, the accent was different. Everyone sounded like her mother. Her father always said that even Clara sounded like her mother.

When Nate walked in, and the music swelled around her with every step he took in her direction. Clara wore a blue dress with gold-colored kitten heels, the necklace her mother had given to her when she turned eighteen around her neck. Clara’s fingers stopped moving when he looked at her, and her lips parted just barely, and when he smiled, the world stopped just as easily as her fingers had.

She had stopped playing, but the music carried on like her fingers were still fluttering along the keys.

Clara remembered it as though she had a holo of it. She wished she had a holo of it, the way his voice harmonized with how she fiddled absentmindedly at the fabric at her waist.

“Hello, I’m Nate,” he said, like he’d just teleported halfway across the room to her. He leaned against the piano, smile wide and almost too white. He was waiting for something, and Clara felt like she was stumbling even before she started speaking.

Clara had studied English in school, but never spoken it outside of a classroom except perhaps once or twice on holiday.

“C-Clara,” she answered, softly, as if speaking too loudly would shatter the dream he had managed to construct so quickly.

“Clara?” he repeated after her, looking for clarification, saying her name in altogether the wrong accent.

“No, Clara. Clahr-uh,” she enunciated it, and he repeated after her, still saying it wrong, and when she laughed, Clara knew.

Americans might have brought destruction everywhere they went, but this one? This one she had to have.

* * *

 

Her father threw a fit when she told him. She was the only child of a potato farmer, one who had done everything right to rise above her family’s station; a law degree, even from the University of Copenhagen, her father said, would be worthless if she went with Nate, and that there was nothing that he could give her that she couldn’t find on her own here in Denmark.

At that point, her mother had laughed, because Clara was just like her, she had said.

Clara’s mother was right. Even if she had considered staying, she would have left just to spite him and his inability to support the decision she was wanting to make.

She and Nate had been together three weeks when she found herself on her way home with him, a whirlwind romance that would have made even a film star blush. English was a hurdle they were constantly trying to tackle, but one that was avoidable; Nate spoke a fairly proficient level of German from his time stationed in the military base just south of the Danish border, and Clara was near-fluent in German, so English only ever came into play when Nate invited friends to the house that really seemed too nice for a soldier who was only in his late twenties.

“This was my fourth deployment,” Nate had told her in his heavy-handed German, as if that somehow explained things, as if she wasn’t twenty-two and a fresh college graduate who had still been living with her parents.

Clara understood more than she spoke, but that wasn’t truly giving her a lot of credit considering that her confidence in it would barely fill a thimble. Still, it didn’t matter too much, because Nate was charismatic for the both of them in a way she could have been in Danish if she perhaps had ever gotten to put her law degree to use.

The degree gathered dust, sitting on the mantle right next to the medal Nate had once explained to her was for exemplary service or something else like that. He was so excited to have someone to take care of that Clara working never even crossed his mind. The one time she brought up maybe trying to find outside of the house, Nate had looked so hurt that she’d never brought it up again.

It didn’t matter. He was beautiful and he loved her and she loved him and in just under a month and a half in this brave new world she was carving out for herself with Nate, Clara found herself with child. A week after that, she and Nate were married.

His family called it a shotgun wedding, a term she didn’t understand until one of the military wives explained it to her. They didn’t like her much, Nate’s family, or at least it didn’t seem like it. Even as Clara’s vocabulary expanded, her understanding of tone was a constant struggle. They didn’t speak any of the German that she and Nate used to bridge the gap between their worlds, and Clara’s English was improving steadily but too slowly for anyone’s liking.

When Shaun was born, English was the last thing on Clara’s mind. There were diapers and bottles and all too much vomit, and the breastfeeding was so exhausting that Clara didn’t realize that she had lost all her baby weight and ten more pounds on top of that until the baby’s third check-up when Shaun was underweight and the tears that rolled down her face burned more calories than she’d eaten in the whole day. Even with Codsworth’s assistance, she had managed to undernourish herself _and the baby_ while she’d been at it, and no amount of consoling from Nate or Codsworth had been able to make that feel any better.

The day after that, Nate bought her a piano, one so close to the kind that Clara had been playing the day she met him that she collapsed in the doorway the moment that she saw it.

Clara wasn’t sure when the music died, when she stopped hearing crescendos every time Nate got close to her, but the second her fingers ghosted the keys, it was back, at least for bursts and moments.

The day she got her music back was the day before the bombs fell, the day before she stuffed her skin and bones body into a vault suit that wasn’t tight enough to stop itself from sagging off of her, the day before she trusted Nate enough to take Shaun into that terrible cryopod. The day she got her music back was her birthday, and to celebrate her twenty-third year beginning, the world went to hell.

* * *

 

There is supposed to be tech in the vault. That’s how he wound up here, bored out of his mind, with water that’s too dirty for him to actually consider drinking it. Deacon’s been posted up here for two days this time, and if he wasn’t _certain_ that it would be a gold mine this would feel like a waste of time. He’s been scoping it out once every couple of weeks, staying a few days each time because he knows how the world works and every time he leaves he’s pretty confident the vault will open up the second he turns his back.

Desdemona thinks he’s too paranoid, even for them, for what they do, but Deacon knows they need to fortify the Switchboard even more than they already have, and if there’s anything down in that vault that could give them the upper hand, Deacon’ll be damned if he doesn’t find it.

He props his feet up on the shoddy table and leans back in the chair where he’s been sitting for the last hour or so, putting a little more faith in the chair’s legs than perhaps someone else would, and closes his eyes. Deacon’s eyes flutter shut, but he’s not foolish enough to fall asleep, not here where he’s exposed to any number of things. It’s a good position for sniping, elevated, but it’s not perfect and it’s not like he has anyone to keep watch. The nap would have to wait. His body starts when he hears a shuddering creak that rattles the general quiet that’s surrounded him the last forty-eight hours (well, save the mole rats and the radroaches, and honestly? _Fuck_ those stingwings). He sits straight up, bracing his rifle against his lap, and the vault door starts to inch open, and well –

All he can think is that PAM definitely didn’t account for this.

Deacon looks down his scope towards where the door has painstakingly slowly creaked open – with the safety _on,_ he’s not an _animal_ – and there’s really no way to miss that bright blue vault suit. The woman is looking around a little too wildly and her chest is heaving so quickly that she’s going to succumb to hyperventilation if the Commonwealth doesn’t eat her alive first. Her face is bright red and Deacon isn’t sure if it’s in terror at the world she’s being faced with or if she’s been crying, but when she whips around to make sure there’s nothing behind her, he can make out faint tear tracks on her cheeks.

Deacon flips the safety off when he hears the familiar buzz of a bloatfly, swiveling quickly to put a quick and quiet bullet straight through its torso. This woman, this survivor, she’s too horrorstruck to even notice the fly or her savior. Deacon supposes he prefers it that way. After a too long survey of the immediate vicinity, the woman stumbles down the hill towards that abandoned little town that looks like it would have been a pre-war wet dream. He watches her descent initially, and when he’s convinced that she’s not coming back, at least not right away, Deacon swings his body into motion and descends into the vault.

That big beautiful freezey-gun is locked up in a case and why Deacon thought he would be able to unlock it is beyond him. He groans, knocking his forehead against the case in frustration before shouldering his rifle and deciding he ought to at least do a little exploring before reporting an absolute best to Desdemona (and Carrington, he thinks with a grimace).

* * *

Everything Clara sees makes her cry harder. The cockroaches are fifty times bigger than they were, her husband was murdered, and her baby was taken away from her when she was close enough that if there hadn’t been glass in the way she could have reached out and touch the kidnapper.

Her husband is dead, her baby is taken, and all she has to show for it is the fact that her law degree had remained untouched, right next to Nate’s medal on the mantle where they’d left the both of them when the bombs started falling. Whenever she thinks she’s taken care of the tears, that maybe they’ve stopped flowing, they come surging back again. Clara grips the wedding ring she’d taken from Nate’s body in her pocket and tries not to remember how cold he’d been, the way the blood spatter still stained his temple. The piano stands there still in the living room, and it had been perfectly tuned when Nate had gifted it to her.

How it survived is beyond Clara’s imagining, and its presence brings a ghost of a smile to her face until she plays a chord and it twangs in such an ugly manner that she realizes she has no idea how long it has stood here, needing a tuning like she needs Shaun back in her arms.

The sob that chokes her has a mind of its own, and when she sees Codsworth, Clara thinks she is hallucinating.

Codsworth is asking for an explanation, for anything, and when he asks if Nate and Shaun would be joining them for dinner, Clara lets out a wail so primal that Deacon hears it as he is exiting Vault 111.

“Dead and gone, Codsworth,” she says, the English feeling clunkier in her mouth than it ever had before, fighting for any words that felt natural. “Nate er død og Shaun blev kidnappet.”

She doesn’t know if Codsworth understands her or if he feels the grief that she is being consumed by, but his voice chokes up like he does, and he lets her hold him as she sobs.

“There are people in Concord, Mum. Perhaps they could help us find young Shaun,” Codsworth says, and when Clara looks at him, there are still tears glistening in her eyes. She nods nonetheless, and rights herself, brushing off the legs of her jumpsuit and trying to swallow the sob that seems to surface with every other breath.

 _The Americans bring destruction everywhere they go_ , her father had said, and Clara wonders if she’ll ever hear that North Jutland accent again, wonders if North Jutland even exists anymore, if Denmark is still sovereign, and when she realizes that it doesn’t matter, she laughs a little hysterically. Nate was the decorated war veteran, and his little housewife is the one who survived the nuclear apocalypse. Her mother had always loved a good subversive laugh, and the universe was certainly having one at her expense. That is the only explanation she can think of for this.

Clara kicks over a can as she heads east towards the gas station she and Nate always stopped by on the way to Concord, and lets her tears dry without wiping them away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey i'm back in hell again -finger guns-
> 
> what she says up there is "nate is dead and shaun is kidnapped"
> 
> you can find me at battlemastershepard.tumblr.com


	2. you ignore them still

She is not cut out for this.

Clara has fought tooth and nail since she crawled out of the vault, and Concord hadn’t been particularly kind either. The Garvey fellow seems upstanding enough, kind to her when it was clear that she was completely out of her depth (though he of course hadn’t turned down her help). When the old woman tells her, “Perhaps Diamond City has the answers you seek,” or something similarly cryptic, Clara has to ask for clarification three times before she understands.

She makes sure to ask for clarification, because Clara’s pretty certain that she agreed to be the leader of the Minutemen on accident, and Preston looks so delighted that she doesn’t have the heart to rescind her acceptance.

If she tries to look at it how Nate would, the Minutemen would be resources, assets. To a mother, being the General of the Minutemen in the current state seems a lot like an underpaid babysitting position.

Needless to say, when Preston offers to accompany her to Diamond City, she has to turn him down. Sure, he might have been useful in making sure she didn’t agree to become the General of another institution –

But she _loves_ this dog. Clara loves this dog (Dogmeat? The name still kind of gives her the willies) more than she thought she could care about anything that was truly of this wasteland, and she’s truly thankful that the Red Rocket stop had ended in their fateful meeting. Clara and Dogmeat vs. the world? Well, she is supremely underqualified, but she thinks they have a decent chance. What was it Nate had said she had? It feels like it’s been less than a day since she’s seen him; there’s no way she’s already forgotten.

What _was_ it?

Clara grips her forehead and moans, the grief flooding back because she’s not sure if it’s the words or her memory or _both_ that’s the problem.

Dogmeat turns and whimpers at her worriedly from his scouting position several yards ahead, bounding back when he sees Clara has stopped. He licks her hand where it drops from her face, and Clara remembers like a lightning strike.

Nerve. Nate had always said she had nerve, that anyone who would pack up their life the way that she had had serious nerve. Clara smiles before she remembers that she’ll never see him again unless it’s when returning to the vault to recover and bury his corpse. Her heart is swelling with grief again, and she quells it as best she can before beginning to move forward again.

Dogmeat’s a faithful scout, and he lets her know whenever there’s potential danger so that, well, she can crouch down and avoid it by any means necessary. Combat in the power armor had been terrifying enough, and she hadn’t been nearly as exposed in that, although the terror that _deathclaw_ thing had commanded had been horrifying enough.

Dogmeat is happy to sneak along beside her, and he always seems to know just when to press up against her side for comfort, when the Commonwealth is becoming too overwhelming for her to rationalize.

She really does love this dog.

When she finally reaches Diamond City, she feels like she could punch herself, because it’s Fenway Park. _Diamond_ City? Of _course_ it’s fucking Fenway. Clara and Nate hadn’t had a whole lot of time together before what Clara wouldn’t hesitate to call a disaster, all things considered, but he had taken her to enough games for her to recognize where she is standing now, watching a woman in red shout down some kind of intercom system.

“Come _on_ , Danny, you can’t just keep me out! I _live_ here!” The woman’s hands are up in the air like she can’t believe this is happening, and from the loudspeaker, Clara hears another voice.

“Sorry, Miss Piper, Mayor’s orders.”

To his credit, the man does sound a fair bit upset about it, and Clara has already found herself sympathizing with the woman when she turns and notices Clara.

“Well, uh,” Piper says, a sly look on her face, “That’s too bad, Danny, because I’ve got a trader from Quincy here with _loads_ of supplies.”

Before Clara knows what’s happening, she is nodding along and letting Piper lead her through a conversation she barely realizes is happening before it’s over.

* * *

 

The Railroad has always had tendrils in Diamond City. It’s the most susceptible to the Institute for several reasons, mostly that it’s the largest settlement in the Commonwealth, but the rumor that Mayor McDonough is a synth is enough reason alone to keep someone on the inside. Mostly they have tourists there, but Deacon stops in every now and then. There are enough guards in Diamond City that he can slide into the ranks relatively undetected, and any discrepancies he can explain away easily enough because, in a true shock, the Diamond City guardsmen _aren’t really very bright_.

Piper’s what Diamond City calls a troublemaker, but despite her fearmongering, Deacon thinks she could be an ally. Truth, justice? Both Railroad principles, if Deacon isn’t mistaken.

When the gate swings open, slowly creaking, he’s not sure what to expect. He doesn’t recognize the second voice that Danny’s been talking to, but that’s not super unusual. There are plenty of people in Diamond City whose voices he doesn’t recognize, and plenty more whose faces he only knows in passing, but well, when the gate swings open, he doesn’t expect _that._

There’s the vault girl, in that bright blue suit he couldn’t miss if he tried. She looks different up close, younger, a little too thin by vault standards (vault dwellers are usually softer around the edges, but she looks more like a wastelander with her sharp lines and angles), but the dirty blonde hair is the same and so is the aura of well-hidden anguish. She’s got a dog with her, one that looks like it could be fearsome in a fight but for now seems content to let its tongue loll out of his mouth and look at the vault girl adoringly.

Deacon doesn’t really believe in fate, but running into her again after breaking into her vault to find everyone else dead (and the _goddamn_ Cryolator sealed up tight) seems like too much of a coincidence even for the Commonwealth. Danny’s rubbing the back of his neck in barely-concealed anxiety; the vault girl clearly isn’t a trader, and when the mayor arrives, he sees the same thing immediately.

“Oh, Mayor McDonough,” Piper says on his arrival in a voice that’s barely civil, “See you’re trying to keep residents out of the city now.”

The dog with the vault girl decidedly does _not_ like McDonough, and the dog’s instincts probably aren’t misplaced, Deacon thinks with a bit of an internal chuckle. The dog is growling and his ears are flat against his head, and he refuses to stray from the vault girl’s side. She scratches his head gently, wanting to defuse some of the tension that’s gathered behind the dog’s eyes, and the dog sits, but doesn’t stop growling.

Deacon doesn’t think that the vitriol in her voice is particularly misplaced, but he knows too that accusing McDonough of being a synth all the time may be catching up with her. The vault girl doesn’t, though, and her eyes go wide in disdain.

“Y-you mean he wasn’t k-kidding about you not being allowed i-in?” There’s an undercurrent of outrage there, but it’s hard to pick out between the stuttering that sounds like a confidence issue and the accent that’s so heavy that McDonough does a double take. Her cheeks go a little red; she knows she sounds different, and she’s skeptical when McDonough’s politician smile comes out in full force.

“Now, Ms. Wright, you had to know there would be _consequences_ for publishing that libel, though I suppose the consequences don’t matter much when Mr. Sullivan is more than happy to let you in anyways.”

Danny sinks down as though he’s trying to make himself as small as possible, but Piper’s lips are twisted in disdain. “Our fearless _mayor_ here,” Piper says to the vault girl, “doesn’t like anyone questioning him when he does shady, underhanded things.”

Deacon doesn’t think the vault girl’s eyes could go any wider. “D-doesn’t that, um…” she squeezes her eyes shut like she’s searching for a word that she’s logged somewhere in her head, and when she finds it she brightens up again, “Impede! Doesn’t that impede the freedom of the press? Or does that not matter here in the wasteland?” The stutter disappears in her excitement, and Deacon finds himself smiling a little bit at that.

Piper gives the vault girl a once-over before nodding in approval. “Yes, indeed, Mayor ours. How can we set ourselves apart from the horde of raider gangs if we don’t appreciate things like the freedom of the press?”

The vault girl looks over at him and makes eye contact, and Deacon gives her a small smile and the biggest nod he can get away without drawing attention to himself from Piper and Mayor McDonough. The mayor is still schmoozing in a way that only politicians know how, and when he asks the vault girl what brings her to Diamond City, the small smile on her face vanishes.

“Someone t-took my baby. Kidnapped him. I was hoping someone here could h-help me find him.” Her accent gets thicker, like she’s about to burst into tears on the spot.

Piper’s voice drops a register. “I’m so sorry.”

“As am I,” McDonough says, although Deacon’s not really sure he believes it. McDonough takes a step forward like he’s going to comfort the vault girl, and Dogmeat lets out a warning bark that stops the mayor where he stands. “Unfortunately, the official Diamond City forces are stretched thin, as you can see.” Deacon tries to hide the deadpan stare he can’t help but give as McDonough continues. “We won’t be able to help you, but perhaps the local detective can.”

Piper’s eyes are on fire. “How long are you going to ignore this, McDonough? People’s kids have been going missing forever and no one’s done a thing about it? Do you really wonder why people believe you’re in league with the Institute?”

“ _People_ don’t believe I’m in league with the Institute, Ms. Wright. _You_ believe I’m in league with the Institute,” McDonough says before looking at the vault girl one last time, side-eying the dog nervously. “I _am_ sorry, and I wish you the best of luck finding your son.”

McDonough takes his leave, and Piper’s rage is matched only by the tears the vault girl is trying _desperately_ to lock away. Piper softens when she realizes, and asks, “Hey, Blue? Don’t think I ever caught your name.”

The vault girl smiles, a little sadly. “Clara Davi- er, Clara Pedersen.” Her accent is thicker around her name, and Piper smiles. “This is Dogmeat,” Clara says, pointing to her companion, who is much better behaved now that McDonough isn’t around. He barks when he hears his own name.

“Where are you from, Clara?” They’re still standing there and Deacon’s acting like he’s watching the wasteland sprawling out outside the gate and Danny’s pretty much disappeared for the moment, so he can act like he doesn’t notice them if they want to pretend he’s not there. Piper scratches behind Dogmeat’s ears, and he flops over onto the ground, exposing his stomach in a gesture that’s all too trusting for a place like Diamond City. Deacon resists the urge to scratch his belly. That seems like maybe stretching the character just a little too much.

Clara laughs, a giggly little thing that sounds a lot different than everything else she’s said. “I don’t think a-anyone here is going to be able to s-say my name right,” Clara says, and she goes a bit quiet. “I don’t even know if w-where I’m from still exists.”

Piper’s lips part softly. “Well,” she says, “If that’s true, then I guess you’re going to need all the friends you can get. Piper Wright, intrepid reporter.”

“N-nice to meet you, Piper,” Clara says, smiling a little shyly, and Piper grins back at her, chattering away.

“I run the newspaper here, the Publick. Stop by and see me later if you’ve got the time. If you’re looking for Nicky, he’s down behind the marketplace. Best of luck, Blue.”

Piper gives Clara one last smile and disappears into the city, leaving Clara in her wake. Clara’s smile looks a little forced, like too much has happened in too little time, and that’s a pretty fair assessment. Anything Piper’s involved in is usually going a hundred miles an hour.

Clara takes one last look at the gate behind her and begins her descent into the city before Deacon stops her.

“Hey, kid,” he starts, and she turns at that.

“Kid?” Clara raises an eyebrow, and Deacon shrugs.

“’Most everybody’s a kid to me anymore, these days at least. I’m getting to be an old man,” he says, sighing loudly for emphasis, the thick Diamond City accent blocky in his mouth. “Just wanted to tell you to keep an eye on that Pip-Boy. Lotta people’ll do a lotta things for a piece of tech like that.”

Clara’s eyes are narrowed, and he’s not sure why; it’s a perfectly valid piece of advice, one that’s weirdly free of any of his signature bullshit. Hell, even the dog is won over by it. Dogmeat bounds over and licks his hand before jumping up on his chest in a way that might’ve bowled him over if he hadn’t been ready for it.

“Why are you talking l-like that?” she asks, and he doesn’t answer, just raising an eyebrow while absently scratching the dog’s left ear. “With a fake accent. It’s close, but n-not quite right.”

 _That_ throws him for a little bit of a loop. Deacon shrugs. “Tongue never fit in my mouth quite right. What’s your excuse, kid?”

“That I-I’m not from here,” she says, and after a moment of deliberation sticks her hand out in a decidedly archaic form of introduction. “Clara.”

There’s a voice in the back of Deacon’s head that’s telling him that this is a decidedly bad idea. Clara’s already sniffed out the fact that his put-on accent isn’t genuine, and giving her a name to put to the face is probably adding fuel to a fire that Desdemona _really_ wouldn’t want burning.

“Marcus,” he says, taking her hand in his and shaking it. Dogmeat protests when Deacon stops the ear scratches, and Deacon says, “Not sure how things were in your vault, but handshakes aren’t in style too much around these parts. Just a word to the wise, friend to friend.”

Dogmeat leaps to Clara’s side as she steps away from him, and Deacon doesn’t miss her rubbing the wedding band on her left hand with her thumb. Handshakes and wedding rings would single her out as an outsider if the vault suit didn’t, a sore thumb in bright blue with a _111_ on the back that people couldn’t miss if they tried.

“F-friend to friend? Might want to work o-on the accent,” Clara says in that soft, shy little voice that hinted at a lack of confidence people would only notice if she opened her mouth. Clara nods at him and descends, and as she disappears, Deacon groans.

He’s going to keep an eye on her, and it’s going to be his little secret, and if Desdemona finds out, she’s going to kill him. If there’s one thing he’s learned, though, it’s to trust his gut in this line of work. “You can’t be wasting Railroad resources on _hunches_ , Deacon, for the _last_ time!” she’d say, and Carrington would nod sagely, and he would suddenly realize that there was a very specific reason why he never came back to HQ for more than about thirty-seven seconds.

His gut’s telling him that Clara “Davi- er,” Pedersen is going to be kind of a big deal around the Commonwealth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow!! so many kudos i want to kiss you all!!! i l y  
> battlemastershepard.tumblr.com


	3. i was so heavy

Nick Valentine’s not quite human, and Clara doesn’t know why she expected anything in this place to just be normal. This kind-hearted robo-man is not human but, in some ways, he is the most human person Clara has met since she came out of the freezer. Piper is nice, sensitive even, but she’s still a product of this new and terrifying world, and Dogmeat’s been her constant companion since Clara found him but he’s still a dog.

He makes her recount watching Nate die, watching the man with the scar place a pistol to her husband’s temple while the person in the hazmat suit holds Shaun in their sterile, unloving arms. Nick grimaces in all the right places, doesn’t point out how her accent thickens every time she mentions _blood_ and _Nate_ and _my baby_ , ignores how she fishes for words except for the one time when he manages to fill in the word _pistol_ for her.

When she’s through with her story, Clara’s hands are fisted in whatever loose fabric she can find in her vault suit. Her face is red and she’s teary-eyed and she is not in any way prepared for what Nick says as soon as she manages to finish wading through the grief again.

“Everything you’ve told me, it all fits the M.O. of a man named Kellogg. Professional, ruthless, and most of all, lethal.”

Clara’s locked and loaded quicker than even she thought possible, and Dogmeat tenses as she does. “Where can I find him?”

Nick winces. “Look, kid,” he begins, and for some reason it feels different when he says it than it did when that security guard, Marcus, had, “We’ve got a few different options, but none I’m willing to tell you without doing a little digging first. I know you’re desperate to find your son, and I don’t blame you, but I’m not about to send you in flying blind.”

Clara swallows her tongue, because he looks poised to continue. There’s a part of her that knows Nick is right, even if she all she really wants to do is go guns blazing after the man who stole Shaun, so Clara looks down a little sheepishly and listens, absently stroking Dogmeat’s head.

“Also,” Nick says, flexing the metal of his robotic hand and looking at her with those eerily yellow eyes, “I wouldn’t send you after someone like _Kellogg_ with nothing but a ten millimeter pistol, not that I’d really let you go alone either. Give me some time, and you should stock up. Find a couple weapons you can count on and as much ammo as you can carry.”

Nick’s secretary, Ellie, is nodding, and Clara smiles weakly at her. “A-any suggestions on the b-best places to find w-work?”

“Diamond City is probably the most reputable,” Ellie says, the first thing she’s said since her emotional reunion with Nick, “but Goodneighbor pays better and doesn’t care nearly as much about where you come from.”

“No offense, but w-without Shaun, I don’t m-much care about my reputation,” Clara says, rolling her right ankle gently. It feels stiff, like she must have rolled it during some part of that whole storm with Skinny Malone. Clara rolled it several years ago (well, a couple centuries now, she thinks not a little bitterly) on a walk along the North Sea with her mother. If she concentrates hard enough, she can almost smell the salt of the sea, hear the waves slapping along the shoreline.

Clara’s lost herself again, and Nick goes silent at the wistful look on her face. The tears well up but they don’t break the surface, but only because Clara manages to avert her eyes from Nick’s. “How l-long? How long d-do I have to g-gear up?”

“At least a week. Two weeks is a little more realistic,” Nick says, and Clara winces. Nick leans forward. “It’s been over two centuries since you’ve held your son. If two weeks is what it takes to make _sure_ you’re able to hold him again, I’ll strap you down and make sure you wait it myself.”

Clara laughs a little bit at that, a sad chuckle, and that coaxes a smile out of Nick. She’s not sure what it is about the detective, but there’s something that makes her want to trust him despite the way Nick always creaks whenever he leans a little too far to the left. Ellie smiles at her like the mother Clara hasn’t seen in a few centuries. When Clara finally speaks, she asks, “Your personal suggestion, Nick?”

The smell of smoke in this building is getting a little too strong for Clara’s tolerance, and Nick’s exhalation (does he have lungs??) doesn’t help. “Goodneighbor,” Nick says, “It’s quite a bit east and a little north of here, but the caps are better. Steer clear of Boston Common.”

“Why?” Clara asks; it had been a pretty little place before the bombs fell.

“Because Swan Pond is there. Trust me. The Common itself is crawling with raiders anyway, but at least stay away from Swan Pond.”

There’s an undertone of begging there, and it quells Clara’s curiosity, at least for now. “Okay, N-Nick.”

Nick nods. “Between you and me, you’re not bad with that little pistol, but you need to find something that hits a little harder or you need to get a little better at sneaking, or you’re not going to stand a chance.” Nick pauses, leaning back like he’s sizing her up. “You going to be able to find your way to Goodneighbor, or do you want me to come along?”

Clara starts shaking her head, but an outraged Ellie beats her to speaking. “What? You just got back, Nick! You’re going to get yourself _killed_ out there and you don’t even take a moment to breathe in between!”

Nick sighs. “Ellie, look-”

Clara cuts him off in the politest way she can. “N-no, Nick. Dogmeat can get me there. You’ve d-done enough for me for now.”

Chuckling, Nick shakes his head. “Like you didn’t pull the tin can out of the fire with Skinny,” he says, and looks at both Clara and Ellie before sighing. “Alright, alright. I know when I’m beaten. I’ll be here if you need me, Clara, and if you don’t hear from me first, check back here in a couple of weeks. Sounds like Ellie’s not going to let me leave.”

Ellie scoffs with affectionate outrage, and Clara knows a cue to leave when she sees one. She thanks them both again and exits, winding her way to the market to stock up on the few stimpaks she can afford and as many bullets as she can carry. Clara knows she’ll need the caps to stock up on all the gear required to take Kellogg as far down as he needs to be to get answers, but she’s hoping that Goodneighbor will be as lucrative as Nick and Ellie had made it sound.

Dr. Sun doesn’t seem to like her much, but she doesn’t mind. It’s easy enough to slip a hand into his pocket and steal the two stimpaks there when he turns to scold Dogmeat for licking at his left pantleg.

After a stop at the medical center and another stop to see Arturo (who Clara’s _much_ fonder of), she and Dogmeat begin ascending the stairs to leave Diamond City. She’s confident Dogmeat knows where they’re going; he hasn’t let her down yet. Still, she turns and casts a last look around the “Great Green Jewel” because Clara’s not sure when (if?) she’s coming back.

* * *

 

The vault girl’s hair is always up. In the last week, Deacon has seen her in and around Diamond City, and never has a strand of hair not been pulled back out of her face. It looks like its dishwater blonde, but the light never hits it right in the strict bun he’s only ever seen it in. It’s a sign of rigidity, or discipline, he thinks, or maybe she just can’t stand having her hair in her face. At least she hasn’t changed out of the vault suit. He doesn’t even have to look for her when she’s wearing that.

“Come on, the view’s not that great, and you can’t even smell the noodles from here.”

Deacon is at the top of the stairs. Clara has taken her sweet time ascending, but for the moment, Deacon has nothing but time. Dogmeat is delighted to see him, barking excitedly, and Deacon smiles at Dogmeat benevolently before reaching into his pocket.

“What do I got, huh, boy?” Deacon asks, and Dogmeat’s tail waves wildly as he withdraws something that is probably crispy squirrel bits. Dogmeat eats it gently from Deacon’s hand, and Clara smiles.

“You w-would give food t-to a dog l-like that?”

“Only dogs with lovely owners,” Deacon drawls, and Clara rolls her eyes even though she can’t hide the blush. “On your way out?” Deacon asks, and Clara nods.

“Goodneighbor,” Clara says, stumbling a bit over the unfamiliar word.

Deacon raises an eyebrow. “Ghoul town?”

“Ghoul t-town, Marcus,” Clara affirms, and Deacon is relatively confident someone must have at least warned her what a ghoul was – Valentine, probably. He’s not one to send people out without knowing what they’re up against.

“What takes you out that way?”

Clara chews her lip briefly, and Deacon’s eyes flick from her too-white teeth to her fingernails, all chewed down to the nub. Anxiety isn’t hard to come by in this world, and he can only imagine that there’s quite a bit of culture shock to be found emerging from a vault even without the heartbreaking loss of a child.

“Caps,” Clara finally says, like she’s not sure why she’s telling him but Deacon’s worked very hard to construct an aura – _likeable, trustworthy, personable_ – and it’s always nice to see it working out. Clara continues, “I need r-resources to save my s-son and Goodneighbor’s the most, um…” Clara pauses, and Deacon can see the gears turning in her head. “G-Goodneighbor’s the most p-promising.”

Deacon hums noncommittally. “Best of luck out there. Your dog friend know how to get you there?”

Dogmeat barks in what Deacon assumes is the affirmative, and Clara nods affectionately. “B-boy’s never let me d-down before. Unless you’re offering your, um, v-vast skillset?”

Is that a tease? It sounds like a tease, but it’s hard to tell through the stutter and the accent. Deacon chuckles in what he hopes is a neutral tone. “Honey, you can’t handle my vast skillset,” he says, and Clara’s eyebrows launch themselves into the stratosphere. Too much, maybe? The light hits the wedding band on her finger, and Deacon only remembers it in that moment. Rookie mistake.

“Honey?” Clara asks, skeptical and dangerous at the same time. Deacon’s pretty confident that the vault girl can’t take him in a fight. She’s underfed even compared to him, and if a survey’s any indicator, Clara’s only packing a ten millimeter.

Deacon shrugs. “Wanted to see if it fit you better than kid, because you didn’t seem to like it much. You seem to hate ‘honey’ just enough for us to keep it.”

“Delightful,” Clara says flatly, accent somehow just making it even more hilarious to Deacon. “Goodbye, Marcus.”

Clara starts walking away, and Deacon says, “Clara,” just quickly enough to catch her and Dogmeat both. “Watch out for the Common, honey.”

“I’ve heard,” she says, and it sounds like it’s through gritted teeth, but Clara doesn’t give him the satisfaction of stopping and turning around, and just like that, she’s off in the wasteland again, Dogmeat faithfully by her side.

The days as a Diamond City guard without any of the actual privileges of a Diamond City guard are long, and as a gate guard, he mostly chats up Danny Sullivan and directs scavvers to Diamond City Surplus. The latest scavver’s a little more alert than the last few; when vagrants show up, they’re normally dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted. This one is bright-eyed and flighty.

“Hey, pal,” the scavver says, looking through Danny Sullivan straight to Deacon. “Do you have a Geiger counter?”

Deacon’s recoils a bit; this is not in the schedule, and normally the consensus is that Deacon is to be left alone during field work unless there’s an emergency.

The way this scavver’s eyes are darting around makes this look like an emergency. Deacon’s slow to respond, but gets there eventually. “Yeah, but mine’s in the shop.”

When Deacon makes it to the Switchboard, it’s just in time to witness all the bloodshot firsthand and get shot in the arm before Glory drags him out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wheeEEEEEE i'm so ecstatic about the feedback i'm getting here on this thank you all for joining me on the sin wagon
> 
> if you wanna reach me at my most sinful @battlemastershepard.tumblr.com :)


	4. i don't know what you've been told

 The arm wound is not as terrible as it had felt when Glory had taken him by the upper arm to drag him into the moonlit Commonwealth. Deacon’s been shot a few (dozen) times, but there’s something about the fact that he had been in so much shock at the people he’s helped train, lied to, lost bets with Glory over lying there around him in various states of dismemberment and gore.

Lily was nineteen years old, and now she’s barely more than ash on the ground in front of him.

Glory grabs him by the upper arm, and in her rush to get him to safety, she clasps her fingers around what’s barely more than a heavy graze. It’s enough to make him cry out in pain, but Deacon’s not sure if the pain is from the actual wound or the fact that the last time he talked to Lily she told him about the tabby cat she had started bottle-feeding after it was rejected by its mother.

He doesn’t remember getting dragged out of the building, just Glory’s words slurring together in his head while the colors around him swam. Desdemona’s there, too, somewhere, the picture of calm efficiency, but Deacon can’t make his legs work. When the colors stop swimming, it’s because everything has gone black.

* * *

 

There’s a kind of music in Goodneighbor that Clara doesn’t expect to find. It reminds her a little of the piano that’s still wasting away back in Sanctuary. These people are crass and crude and all too many of them are high, but there’s a kind of violent beauty in how Hancock is just as likely to lend a hand as he is to stab someone.

No amount of preparation given to her by Nick would have prepared Clara for Goodneighbor, the place where she sees a man stabbed within the first ten minutes of her arrival. Once she’s able to wrap her mind around what a ghoul really is, as opposed to the description Nick and Ellie gave her and the experiences she’s had with the ferals, Goodneighbor isn’t so nervewracking, especially considering the monster she managed to glimpse at Swan Pond.

This might have a little to do with the fact that Hancock killed a man in front of her in a way that doesn’t quite qualify as a dispute with raiders. Nick hadn’t mentioned anything about more allies, but well, if she had learned anything from Nate in their short time together, it’s that networking is what got Nate places. Clara doesn’t know if she’d call Hancock an ally, but anyone who would stab a man like that, in broad daylight? She doesn’t want to call him an enemy.

There is a brutality here that sings, an honestly Clara couldn’t say she found in Diamond City, and it is as refreshing as it is terrifying.  It’s also nice to know that all that junk Dogmeat has been picking up and dragging back to her is worth something; Clara has at least six inhalers of jet that she has no use for, but Goodneighbor is definitely buying.

KL-E-0 is terrifying, but once Clara is able to get past all the ghoulness, Daisy is almost as kind as Nick, if a little rougher around the edges. Daisy smiles at Clara from the second she walks through the door, and when Clara smiles back, Daisy actually laughs, a raspy noise that sounds like it only occurs once a century.

“Well, look at that. You didn’t even run away screaming,” Daisy says, head tilted to the side in a welcoming manner.

“Is that c-common?”

Daisy doesn’t comment on the accent, but the smile gets a little kinder. “Most of the vault people walking around up here see exposed sinuses and immediately run away as fast as they can. Now, you here to buy or trade?”

Daisy gives her back a few more caps than she should have. Not many, mind you, but enough that Clara notices it and tries to give them back, but Daisy scoffs and insists that she wouldn’t have, “made a mistake.”

The ghouls aren’t so bad, if you can get past the exposed sinuses. Daisy hadn’t been wrong in that that is just a wee bit unnerving.

Dogmeat is curled up on the bench outside Daisy’s shop, and Clara sits herself down beside him, absently running her hand down his back and trying to figure out what to do next. She _needs_ to find some kind of job, and she’s not above knocking a few heads together for the right amount of caps; Clara’s just not sure how to get to that part. _Hey, I need a job please, and my dog is more qualified than me._ It sounds ridiculous in her head, and she’s sure it would be even worse in practice. Lost in her head, she doesn’t notice Dogmeat suddenly bound away and nearly tackle a man in sunglasses.

* * *

 

The dog is good. The dog is too good. He is licking Deacon’s face like they’re best pals from the University Point days, and holy _fuck_ it’s a good thing that Clara’s got that spacey, lost-in-her-head face on because anybody else in the Commonwealth would have noticed this highly suspect thing the moment it happened and recognized Marcus from the Diamond City gates.

Clara leans back, body language open, and Deacon’s not sure why she’s feeling so trusting of this terrible world around her until he notices Daisy watching from inside her shop. The vault girl trusts a ghoul. Shakespeare couldn’t have written it better.

Deacon beat Clara to Goodneighbor by roughly three hours, and his arm is still stinging from the disaster at the Switchboard. Still, it had given him enough time to plant a couple _Join the Railroad_ tapes in the Old State House, one in KL-E-0’s shop, and a few other places that he doesn’t quite remember. If Clara is stopping for a breather, Deacon thinks as Dogmeat returns to her side, there’s still time to set a few people whispering about the Railroad around town, too. Dogmeat starts barking to get Clara’s attention, and Deacon slips away towards the Third Rail before she comes to her senses enough to notice him, tossing iguana bits after the dog in the most diplomatic maneuver he can manage.

* * *

 

When Clara finds work, she is thankful that she met Daisy before meeting Bobbi No-Nose. Technically, Clara supposes, Hancock is the first ghoul she met that wasn’t trying to claw her face off, but Daisy is the one who really made an impression. Bobbi is sly, tough, and underhanded, and tells her to report to the dig site at nightfall, which leaves Dogmeat and Clara alone with only Clara’s thoughts and the mobster-like neighborhood watchmen who look at her like she’s a dead woman walking every time she gets too close.

The music’s different now, and it’s real, not just in Clara’s head. Magnolia is a crooner, a sultry and velvety voice that Clara could even say she envies. She flits in and out of Goodneighbor’s buildings and Dogmeat mostly leads the way. Clara rents a room at the Hotel Rexford though she may not see it until the morning if Bobbi’s enthusiasm had been any indicator, and follows Magnolia’s voice to the open door of the Third Rail, planning to spend the last few hours before she has to meet Bobbi at the dig site there.

* * *

Jesus Christ, he’s _trying_ to be discreet. Clara herself isn’t the problem; the dog is. Why does Clara show up everywhere Deacon is with that too-clever dog by her side?

* * *

Clara doesn’t notice the man in sunglasses, and he evades Dogmeat’s detection as well. There are too many smells down here for the dog to pick out Marcus’s scent, and Clara’s completely occupied with trying to keep Dogmeat off of Whitechapel Charlie’s bar. Nothing in the Commonwealth seems particularly sanitary, but Charlie is offended enough that Clara tries to pay double for the shot of whiskey she buys, which, apparently, makes Charlie even more upset.

Why she let Codsworth lull her into the idea that every Mr. Handy in this godforsaken place would be a comfort is beyond Clara. Frankly, she feels she deserved the wake-up call.

Tossing back the whiskey, Clara swallows and sighs, Dogmeat calming down enough to wrap his body around the base of the stool she’s sitting on. Clara’s not looking for a buzz, just something to calm the nerves that have been firing wildly since she left Sanctuary.

She’s not sure why she ordered whiskey. Clara had always been a bit of a vodka or rum girl; whiskey was Nate’s thing, and as it burns down her throat, Clara swallows the tears with the alcohol, and wonders if Nate wouldn’t have already found Shaun if he’d been the one to survive instead of her.

“Give me Shaun so you can change,” Nate had said, already in the bright blue vault suit that she’s still wearing, and she’d obliged. By the time she’d squeezed her body into too much spandex and a color that made her eyes look more gray than blue, Shaun and Nate were already at the next stage of processing, and then she was watching them enter that pod and thinking that her own arms felt helplessly empty.

Dogmeat headbutts her foot at the point of no return, because Clara’s coming up to the point where she starts wondering _why me? Why couldn’t I have died so that you could find Shaun? I should have died_. Clara looks down at the dog, but Dogmeat isn’t looking at her. She follows his gaze to find a ghoul staring at her on the other end, a woman if the clothing is any indicator.

“I’m sorry,” the ghoul says in that raspy voice that only radiation can cause. She takes a step forward, but Clara doesn’t move from the chair. “But can I ask your name? You look like someone I knew once.”

Nick had said that some of the ghouls around these parts were pre-war, but Clara could count on her fingers how many people in the greater Boston area knew her name before the bombs fell.

“C-Clara,” she says, a little suspiciously, but the suspicion starts to fall away when the ghoul speaks again, sounding like she’s close to crying if ghouls even can cry.

“It _is_ you. You look just like before: the hairstyle, the accent, the sad eyes-”

Clara’s never heard that her eyes are sad before. Given everything that’s happened since she came out of the vault, now it would make sense, but before?

“Clara, it’s Amelia. Joey’s wife. Remember?” The ghoul is getting closer and closer, and Clara takes a sharp breath in, because it’s like she almost remembers but not quite. “I brought the potato salad to the football game the Saturday before the bombs fell, and you made those pork meatballs that had a name no one could pronounce.”

“Frikadeller,” Clara says, and when the word comes out of her mouth, she can almost taste them for the briefest of seconds, pork and oats and onion. She launches herself out of her place at the bar and wraps her arms around Amelia’s neck in an intimate hug. Amelia had always been one of the kinder military wives, the one who’d explained what a shotgun wedding was, and that, with more time, Clara had thought could have been a good friend even if they hadn’t met through their husbands.

When Clara pulls away, it’s hard to reconcile the face she sees with the Amelia she knew, but it _must_ be her.

“You look exactly the way I remember you before the bombs fell. Where have you been all these years?” Amelia asks, and it’s a fair question. Clara doesn’t want to relive this experience again; she’s just given it to Nick back in Diamond City, and she replays it in her head all the time anyway, but Amelia might even understand better than Nick had.

* * *

Daisy first and now this random ghoul in the Third Rail? Clara couldn’t be more full of surprises if she tried to be, Deacon muses. Watching her talk with Amelia is a little like watching a time capsule, and it makes Deacon wonder when exactly Clara wound up in the vault. Most vaulties are born down in them, but if she knows a ghoul topside, then that complicates things. Maybe the ghoul had been in the vault, too? That doesn’t really make sense either; everyone else in Vault 111 had been dead when Deacon had investigated after his failed Cryolator burglary.

There had been two empty pods, he muses, like that somehow makes this situation make more sense. If he’d been a better hacker he could have gotten into the overseer’s notes, and maybe then he’d understand a little more.

Still, patience is a virtue, and Deacon’s planted enough Railroad propaganda in Goodneighbor that it’s impossible that Clara will leave without having at least heard of them. Deacon doesn’t know what she and Nick put together, but if he knows Valentine at all, then she’ll have an idea that the Institute is involved in taking her son. Deacon doesn’t know that for a fact, of course, but it fits everything the Railroad knows, which isn’t much. The Institute’s been kidnapping people for years.

And if the Institute is involved (and Deacon is pretty confident about that), then Clara and the Railroad make a logical partnership. After the Switchboard, the Railroad’s not in a position to turn down any partnership, much less one as fitting as theirs would be with Clara.

Deacon doesn’t like needing people, but the Railroad needs Clara, and Clara needs them.

* * *

Clara manages not to cry the whole time she’s recounting her story, and Amelia is a blast from the past that Clara has been aching for. When everything’s said and done, Clara’s exhausted and it’s almost time to go to the dig site, but she doesn’t slip away before Amelia pulls her in for a final hug, squeezing tight in a way that she hasn’t felt since Nate died.

“I j-just don’t know h-how I’m going to d-do this, Lia. I r-really don’t,” Clara says, and it’s closer to a sniffle than she wants to admit. Amelia smiles gently, and Clara can feel it from where Amelia’s chin is resting on her shoulder.

“Clara,” Amelia says, bracing Clara’s shoulders, “You moved across the Atlantic for a man you’d only known for three weeks. You can do anything.” Clara stays silent; she’s not sure if it’s true, but it’s certainly nice to hear. Amelia continues, “If you really think it’s the Institute, there’s a group out there that’s dedicated to fighting them. Their focus is on freeing synths from the Institute, but if anyone knows how to hit _back_ at the Institute, it’s the Railroad.”

It seems a little like a waste of time to be searching out friends when she could be looking for her sons, but Amelia’s point is solid. What she’s saying is a reiteration of what Nick had, but she says it a little more beautifully when she starts speaking again.

“You need all the firepower you can get so that when you find the bastards who took your baby, you can blow them all to hell.”

Clara’s quiet for a little too long, and finally, she asks, “How do I find them?”

Amelia smiles, and it’s almost bloodthirsty without the lips to soften it. “Follow the Freedom Trail.”


	5. put on a symphony

When Clara tells Amelia about Bobbi’s dig and what a disaster it turned out to be, Amelia laughs. Clara’s a little offended, and thinks Amelia’s laughing at her, but Amelia shakes her head. “I didn’t think No-Nose was stupid enough to take on Hancock, of all people.”

Hancock offers to travel with Clara, and Clara considers the offer in a way that she hadn’t with Piper and Nick. Hancock’s smart, savvy, and intimidating, but there’s something that Clara can’t quite put her finger on that makes her incapable of saying yes, telling him that if he wants to, “take a walk,” as Hancock puts it, Sanctuary and the Minutemen could put him to use. Clara doesn’t know if Hancock will take her up on it, but it doesn’t stop her from extending the offer to Amelia as well.

“You c-can come back to S-Sanctuary,” Clara says, holding Amelia’s hands in hers, “There’s good people there, a-and maybe once I c-catch a moment we can have afternoon t-tea.”

Amelia laughs, a rasp and growl deep in her throat. “I haven’t had tea in two hundred some years, but if you find it, certainly come knocking on my door.” Clara’s pretty certain Amelia will at least come for a visit, if nothing else.

Clara remembers the Freedom Trail; Nate had always talked about how they were going to walk it as soon as they got a chance, and then, well, the bombs fell. The irony of walking it now, looking for friends to help her avenge her murdered husband and find her kidnapped son, is not lost on Clara. Finding out about it here, in Goodneighbor, saves her several stops on the walk, and one of the stops would have been Swan Pond anyway. Going past Swan Pond again is something that Clara is not going to do unless Shaun is in the pond itself.

The Old Corner bookstore, to Faneuil Hall, to the Paul Revere House, and then the Old North Church, if she remembers what Nate told her correctly, and when she and Dogmeat get ready to leave Goodneighbor, there’s a telltale red line leading her along the way.

It’s been three or four days since she saw Nick in Diamond City, so there’s still a week and a half until she’s supposed to check back in with the detective. Each day is agony, wondering whether or not her son is seeing the sun rise every morning as she is, and if each day she’s preparing might be the day that she becomes too late.

There are a few positives to this experience, though they don’t match up to the pain of not having Shaun in her arms and not having Nate by her side. Clara hasn’t always been so thin, but the trip to America hadn’t agreed with her; still, in the Commonwealth, where everyone she’s seen has been undernourished, her body type is the norm. On top of that, every day Clara speaks English is another day of experience, and while the stutter hasn’t disappeared, it’s much less prominent. Her accent, of course, is still a kind of disaster; every time she has to repeat herself to a merchant is horrifying.

She misses Danish though, and speaks a little of it to Dogmeat whenever the chance arises, but it doesn’t mean much when he can’t respond in kind. Missing her native tongue seems like a small complaint compared to the other problems in her life, but to Clara, it’s a little like the cherry on top of the misfortune sundae.

The Old Corner bookstore isn’t much of a problem to clear the path through. There are a few feral ghouls, but Dogmeat is able to rip one’s throat out before they even rise from the prone position, and Clara manages to cripple one of the other one’s leg as Dogmeat takes care of the second. Once she does that, the ghoul can’t move nearly as easily, and it’s far from clinical but Clara is able to put a bullet through its forehead.

She’s bought a couple different pieces to experiment with – a sniper rifle, a shotgun, and something K-L-E0 called a laser pistol – but Clara’s not too comfortable with any gun quite yet. The 10mm she has makes her feel the closest to comfortable, but the gun still feels heavy in her hands. It feels a lot like how it had when she’d tried to pick up a guitar, too heavy, more like blunt force than the precision she associated with a piano.

Clara’s little pistol sings, though, even if Clara can’t understand the music. The notes are too heavy, harsh, like they want Clara to refine them but she doesn’t have the tools or know-how.

* * *

 

Besides Swan Pond, which the Freedom Trail runs right beside, Deacon would say that Faneuil Hall is the most dangerous spot people will encounter on their way to the Railroad except for maybe the catacombs in the church itself. Ghouls can be tricky even in open spaces with room to run, and they are much more so in enclosed areas, and, well, catacombs are pretty tight.

Faneuil Hall, though, is its own little monster. Deacon doesn’t know what it is about it, but every time someone clears out the Big Green Guys, the super mutants re-establish themselves within the week. If Clara is going to have trouble anywhere, if there’s anywhere that her dog can’t protect her, it’s at Faneuil Hall.

This is all completely unrelated to the fact that he’s posted up on top of a building just south of Faneuil Hall. Deacon’s not looking to start a fight, but well, if the vault girl manages to start one she can’t finish, then he’s not opposed to lending her a hand. He’s feeling a little altruistic today, and the Railroad needs Clara anyway, even if his hunch is wrong and Clara ends up being just another body to throw at the Institute. Deacon thinks his gut is still right, that Clara’s not great with a gun yet but that she’s got the kind of drive that they need, but if it’s not, then Desdemona won’t say no to one more person willing to wave a gun around for the cause.

For what she lacks in raw killing skill, Clara makes up a lot of points in sneakiness, and the dog is a lot more subtle than Deacon would have given him credit for at first glance. Dogmeat has great discretion in apparently everything except for blowing Deacon’s carefully crafted cover.

It’s kind of a marvel to watch, in an incredibly uncultivated way. Clara doesn’t like to get her hands dirty, that much is clear, and Dogmeat is more than happy to slink along next to her. Once, the dog even noses her side when she’s getting ready to walk into a fragmentation mine, and Deacon actually shakes his head in disbelief. That kind of partnership would be a miracle for two humans, much more so considering that in this case one of the partners walks on four legs.

They weave around the ruins, Dogmeat and Clara, straying from the red line when they have to but managing never to leave Deacon’s sight. When they stray a bit too far, Deacon can look down his scope, but he never loses them. Just when Deacon thinks that they’re actually going to manage to maneuver themselves through without making a single mistake, Clara steps on broken glass that crunches underneath her boot.

Clara freezes briefly, and the fight or flight question runs through her head; Deacon can see it in her deer in the headlights eyes. She’s tense, and when Dogmeat hears a supermutant’s, “huh?” his ears flatten to his head. Deacon gets ready to line up for a shot, and just when he thinks that Clara’s ready to fly, she turns to fight.

The super mutant is a brute, thicker than some of his brethren, but Clara and Dogmeat have managed to almost escape the ruins of Faneuil Hall, so the mutant is isolated. The mutant finally notices them, and gets ready to yell out some kind of battle cry that Deacon is sure would only reassure Clara and Dogmeat of his intelligence, but Dogmeat jumps forward first.

The dog launches himself ahead, up to the brute’s neck, and the super mutant swallows the cry in what sounds like a gurgle of blood and pain to Deacon’s faraway ears. Clara’s eyes are wide, like she had been ready to fight but doesn’t know what to do now that Dogmeat has taken the initiative, and in her hesitation, Deacon lines up the shot. He can’t take it now, not with Dogmeat still attached to the mutant’s neck; there’s too much chance he’ll blow the dog’s head off, and there’s no way Clara would join them if he killed her closest friend.

Well, he’s come to be fond of the dog, too. A person doesn’t just share iguana bits with someone and then not call them a friend.

The mutant finally manages to fling Dogmeat away, and he whimpers loudly as his body slams against the wall of some other nondescript ruin. Deacon doesn’t know if he hears Clara’s gasp or imagines it, but as he readies himself to take the shot, Clara throws herself at the mutant in a way that’s too close to how Dogmeat had just moments before. She blocks his shot, and Deacon grimaces; he can’t help her if she’s that close, and it is almost a disaster. Clara is in his crosshairs for a brief moment, and his finger is tight on the trigger, but he’s forced to relax. Saving her isn’t worth _killing_ her.

Deacon hadn’t realized she was packing a knife, but that’s a mistake. The second she pulls it out of her right boot, it’s clear it has been there the whole time, and Deacon just hasn’t noticed. The mutant is flinging her around, bleeding from the neck and still unable to do anything more than gurgle. Clara holds on tight with one skinny arm, and with the other, plunges the knife into the side of the mutant’s neck that Dogmeat hadn’t managed to mangle. He falls, and when he falls, Clara stumbles back several steps, covered in blood and breathing heavily.

She takes one look down at herself, the state she’s in, sweaty and covered in blood she helped draw, and vomits.

Deacon winces. The vault girl is still soft, and this is a lesson she has to learn (it’s better to spill blood than lose your own), but it feels a little too voyeuristic to be watching her at this vulnerable. Hot blood hitting him in the face still isn’t something Deacon is insensitive too, and that was a pretty brutal kill.

Clara recovers quickly, but it’s not for her own sake. Dogmeat’s breathing, but Deacon can barely make it out through his scope. Clara fumbles with a stimpak, looks Dogmeat up and down like she’s not sure where to apply it on a living being that’s not human, eventually settling on the scruff of his neck. Dogmeat’s breathing deepens shortly after that, and Clara relaxes just slightly. She doesn’t wipe off her face, but flops down next to the dog, pulling his head into her lap and stroking his blood-soaked fur with her similarly bloody hand.

Deacon gets ready to leave. There’s time to beat them back to the church, especially if they’re stopping for Dogmeat to rest up, and they’ll have no problem the rest of the way on their own if they didn’t need his help here, but the wind carries something up to him that he doesn’t expect to hear.

“Solen er så rød, mor, og skoven bli’r så sort…” Clara sounds like she’s close to crying, and her voice cracks a few times, but this sounds natural, like it must be her native language. Deacon doesn’t have any clue what it might be. “Nu er solen død, mor, og dagen gået bort…”

The only person Deacon’s ever heard sing that wasn’t on the radio was Magnolia, except for that one time that Hancock was just a little too drunk. There’s a part of him that would like to stay, but Deacon doesn’t understand the song anyway, and he’s already watched her vomit after being sprayed in super mutant blood. Clara probably deserves a little privacy.

* * *

 

Clara doesn’t know what she expected.

She had to actually fight her way through the catacombs, couldn’t just sneak through. The ghouls were too concentrated to avoid, and Clara thinks she killed around five and Dogmeat took care of probably nine. She loves Dogmeat desperately, and she briefly thought that she was going to lose him after the mutant slammed him against the wall, but a couple of stimpaks and a full night of sleep make him nearly good as new. Dogmeat barely even limps when he wakes up.

So here Clara is, in the basement of the Old North Church, with dried super mutant blood on her vault suit and some gross ghoul residue on the 10mm that she should really give a name, considering everything that she’s put it through. She’s fought through ghouls and super mutants and snuck around them too all to get stuck at a glorified decoder ring.

If Clara thought she could get away with it, she would scream in frustration, but she doesn’t know if there are other ghouls or mirelurks or some other bullshit that wants to kill her down here.

She’s tried all kinds of things but everything seems too simple, and most of them don’t even work on the ring anyway. _Justice. Freedom. Synths. Slavery. Liberty._ Nothing works.

Clara’s nearly ready to give up, because honestly? She didn’t just clean out their house only to get turned away at the door. There’s one final, half-assed attempt left in her, and Clara sarcastically spells out the word _railroad_ before turning to walk away. Just as she does, the wall creaks, the bricks come apart, and there’s an opening for Clara to enter.

“You have got to b-be kidding me,” Clara mumbles under her breath, and she and Dogmeat make it about five steps before there’s a blinding spotlight on her. Clara’s hand flies up to shield her eyes, and when they finally adjust, she can make out three figures standing there, two with guns pointed at her.

“You can stop right there,” the figure in the middle says, a woman, the only one not pointing a gun at her. Clara puts both hands up now that her eyes have adjusted in a sign of universal surrender. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this meeting. Why?”

“I was looking for the R-Railroad,” Clara says, and the other woman’s voice is stern. She doesn’t acknowledge Clara’s accent, but that doesn’t really mean anything.

“Well, you found them. How did you find us?”

“I heard about you from…” Clara’s a little distracted by the giant gun the dark-skinned woman is holding steadily. “A friend in Goodneighbor?”

“Hancock?” The woman in the middle must be the leader. The other two haven’t even tried speaking.

Clara doesn’t say a word, but shakes her head.

“I suppose where you found us doesn’t matter. What does matter is this: would you give your life for your fellow man, even if that man was a synth?”

Clara snorts, and the woman’s gaze sharpens. “I-I’m sorry. It’s just that I j-just almost got myself killed trying to s-save Nick Valentine,” Clara says, and that garners a raised eyebrow.

“I suppose that answers that question then,” the woman says before asking, “Why were you looking for us?” Clara looks to her left to find Dogmeat looking as unthreatening as possible before answering.

“I…” Clara starts and stops; this is still hard to say. “I think the I-Institute stole my son. My friend said you w-were the only ones who e-ever try to hit back.”

The woman softens. “I’m so sorry.”

There’s movement behind the woman, and though the two guns stay aimed on Clara, the leader turns as a man walks out.

The woman opens her mouth like she’s going to ask him a question, but she’s cut off by Dogmeat barking delightedly, and when the dog bounds forward to greet the newcomer, Clara is thankful that the two people with guns had been distracted by this Deacon’s arrival. Clara doesn’t really understand why Dogmeat has such a reaction to him until she registers the sunglasses.

Sure, he’s not wearing the glorified catcher’s uniform, and he’s got some kind of wig on, but that’s absolutely Marcus from the Diamond City gate, and Clara’s not sure what his game is, but he definitely has one.

“Hey, pal,” Deacon says, leaning down to scratch Dogmeat’s head to the dog’s delight. Dogmeat’s tail is wagging like it won’t ever stop, only padding back to Clara when she whistles. “What can I do you for, Dez?” Deacon asks the woman in the middle.

“Well, clearly, you know something,” she says, gesturing towards Clara.

“Whoa,” Deacon says, “Newsflash, Boss? This lady’s _kind_ of a big deal out there. General of the Minutemen? Clara Pedersen? Ringing any bells?”

The leader pinches the bridge of her nose exasperatedly. “Is this you vouching for her?”

Deacon shrugs noncommittally, and “Boss” sighs. “Fine,” she says, like it’s killing her to say it, “Start her off as a tourist.” Turning to Clara she says, “Speak to Deacon when you’re ready. He’ll give you your first assignment.”

Clara turns to where Deacon’s standing, under the lights with her now, and when he gives her a lazy smile, Clara's pretty sure that Marcus isn't even real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i probably love you
> 
> The song is a Danish lullaby and those lines translate to "The son is so red, mother, and the forest is getting so dark. Now the sun is dead, mother, and the day is gone away"


	6. it's something unpredictable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: abuse mention, not confirmed abuse

The vault girl has a scar on her neck that Deacon only notices while he’s telling her that he’d consider it a favor if she didn’t sell them out to the Institute. Her eyes darken when he even broaches the subject, and that’s enough to make Deacon believe that it’s probably safe to take her to what’s left of the Switchboard. Passion like that? That’ll all be wasted if they make Clara into a tourist. If they retrieve Carrington’s prototype, they can skip all the bullshit Dez wants to waste time on.

The scar looks like a burn scar. Clara’s never given any indication that she’s been abused (accent’s a little thicker and she stutters a little more when she’s talking to men than she does when she’s talking to women, but that could be explained a number of ways), not while he’s been watching. She stands tall, doesn’t flinch except when it’s not unreasonable, but Deacon doesn’t know how anybody would get a scar there if it wasn’t inflicted by somebody else.

Deacon’s pretty sure that he likes the vault girl, but he’ll wait to see how she performs with a human partner before making a final decision. He watches Clara leave, and Dogmeat follows, but it’s a little reluctant, like he almost wants to stay with Deacon. Clara says something almost stern in a language that Deacon doesn’t understand, and Dogmeat whines quietly. She looks almost hurt when Dogmeat gives Deacon’s hand a final lick before trotting after her.

Before meeting at their scheduled rendezvous point, Deacon changes. The ratty white t-shirt and rolled up jeans are comfortable, but he needs something a little warmer for out here. The Commonwealth is unforgiving, and, well, sometimes a little chilly.

Clara is less inconspicuous. She’s still in the vault suit, but she must have stopped in a settlement somewhere before meeting him, because most of the blood is gone from the bright blue of her suit. The Minutemen are popping up in enclaves all over the ‘Wealth. Clara could have stopped at any number of places and they would have been happy to welcome her long enough for her to clean up.

When she sees him, Deacon thinks she probably only recognizes him because of the sniper rifle he’s got slung across his lap and the way that Dogmeat perks up when they come across him.

“D-Deacon?” Clara’s stutter is pronounced, like she knows she’s going to make a fool of herself if it isn’t him. “I-is that y-you?”

“Like the disguise? It’s what I wear when I wanna look like a Minuteman,” he says, and Clara arches an eyebrow so high that Deacon thinks it might just disappear into her hairline. “You’re lucky I didn’t do one of my face swaps, too.”

The eyebrow comes back down, and Clara squints, skeptical. Good. She’s learning fast. “Face swaps? You change your face?”

Deacon shrugs, nonchalant. “Only when the women around Diamond City start beating down the Railroad’s door, looking for that handsome guard, Marcus.”

Clara’s face goes up in flames; she doesn’t like being reminded of the deception, but her expression is worth testing the waters just a bit. When she blotches up, Deacon can’t even tell that that scar he noticed is on her neck.

“Anyway,” Deacon continues, “The Railroad didn’t always have this setup underneath the Old North Church. Before that, we had a base underneath a Slocum Joe’s.”

“Wait. S-Slocum Joe’s? Isn’t t-that a donut s-shop?” Clara asks.

“Look,” Deacon says, “It was a lot better than it sounds. Trust me.”

* * *

 

There’s a swagger to Deacon that Clara struggles to place, and when she does, it hurts. Clara can’t figure out what’s real and what’s not real about Deacon, but that swagger is real enough to look like a shadow of Nate come back to haunt her. She runs a finger along the cool metal of Nate’s wedding ring, nestled safely in a pocket that the vault suit barely has. What on earth would her husband think of her now?

Dogmeat loves Deacon as much as he loved Marcus at the Diamond City gates, and Clara actually feels a little jealous of the way that Dogmeat pads after him. Dogmeat’s never given any indication before that he likes someone more than he likes Clara, so having to fight for the dog’s affection at all stings a little. Clara had always thought that Shaun loved Nate more, that he cried less when his father held him, even though she was the one who fed him from her breast and literally pushed him into this world.

Watching Dogmeat sit obediently in front of Deacon, tossing around some old teddy bear when the Railroad operative asks if he can do any tricks, rubs a wound that had started two hundred some years ago.

Ricky, the tourist they question, is an asshole. Still, even if Clara can’t convince him to give them extra supplies, she thinks his information is probably credible. When she says so to Deacon, he nods.

“Yeah,” he drawls, “Ricky’s a piece of work, but I think he’s probably being straight. Trouble with this job is figuring out the ten percent of the time people are trying to put one over on you as opposed to the ninety percent they’re on the up and up.

They have two options, Deacon says; the three of them can try a frontal assault, or they can use the back entrance. Clara’s really not sure how much use she’d be in a frontal assault anyway, so the back way is the only option she ever really considers. It’s a bit of a trek, but Dogmeat scouts for them, and Deacon’s able to snipe the little resistance they encounter on the way.

“I’ve n-never liked i-insects,” Clara mumbles under her breath, not meaning for Deacon to hear it, but he does.

“I hear pre-war that they were even bigger,” Deacon says, “Large enough that if you put seven or eight of them together they’d be almost the size of a house.”

Everyone knows Clara is from a vault; the suit gives that much away. The only person she’s told that she’s pre-war, though, is Nick (and Ellie was there, too, Clara muses), so Deacon has no idea that before a week or two ago the only cockroaches Clara had ever seen hid in her pantry when she didn’t keep it clean enough and that they were no bigger than her thumb.

If there’s one thing she knows about men, though, it’s that they like to hear that they’re right. “I-Is that so?” Clara asks, disinterested but indulgent.

They fall silent when he realizes she’s only playing along, not really taking the bait, and when Clara daintily drops down into the pipe that leads to the back entrance, Deacon is right behind her, with Dogmeat bringing up the rear.

“What exactly are we up against down here, you may be asking?” Deacon says, and Clara isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or to himself. “Well, the Institute found us here and now the place is overrun by synths. Be prepared.”

Clara unholsters the 10mm that’s always at her side, and motions Deacon forward to open the door.

“You’re going to make the sniper go first? Unbelievable,” he says, mock-incredulously, and when he steps inside, Clara follows.

This place sings from the moment she enters, but it’s a sad song, one punctuated by the corpse that Clara has to step over in order to make progress, and the many more that she’s sure are ahead.

* * *

 

She adapts well, and knows better than to take point somewhere she’d be flying even blinder than usual. Clara’s little gun clinks against the gold of her wedding ring, drawing attention to it. Even when he and Barbara had been married, they’d never had rings. Anything valuable like that Deacon would have pawned off to make the farm even a little more habitable. Maybe wealth works differently in the vaults. Vaults like Vault 81 didn’t seem to.

Clara steps gingerly over Lily’s body, the one mangled at the entrance like she’d nearly made it out but not quite. Deacon briefly hopes that her cat is okay even if Lily herself couldn’t make it.

Deacon can’t figure out why he made it and Lily didn’t; she was barely nineteen, with a good heart and a boyfriend and a cat who she had taken in. He wonders if her boyfriend even knows she’s dead, or if he’s still wondering. As far as he knows, Jack is still posted up in Randolph Safehouse, unless the Institute wiped that off the map, too. Deacon doesn’t want to be the one to break that news, but he can’t think of anyone else better qualified. It doesn’t seem like the right kind of thing to break to someone via dead drop.

Deacon watches Clara, who has stepped over Lily’s body, and the vault girl’s breath catches.

“You alright, Boss?” Deacon asks. Clara jerks sharply towards him at that, and Deacon continues, “Figured it was better than kid or honey.”

Clara swallows, and it looks like it gets stuck in her throat as she turns her gaze back to Lily. “She’s not t-that much younger than m-me.”

There’s genuine grief there, even though Clara has no attachment whatsoever to Lily; she’s grieving like Deacon would be if he had the capacity for anything other than being emotionally stunted. Clara kneels down and brushes Lily’s eyelids closed, and she doesn’t even know Lily’s name.

“Anyway,” Deacon says, clearing his throat, and Clara blinks away the sadness from her eyes, filing it away. “One of my colleagues, we’ll call him Codename: Asshole, was working on a prototype, and it got left behind in the disaster here. We’re here to collect it, return to Desdemona, and bask in some praise. Job was too big for just me, but it’s perfect for you, me, and our furry friend here.”

Dogmeat wags his tail when Deacon looks at him, and Clara nods, taking ‘Codename: Asshole’ in stride. A shame. Deacon wants to see the indignant blush again.

They make their way through the Switchboard, and Deacon’s not used to taking point but Clara’s happy to follow behind him. She flinches whenever they kill a synth, and they’re only Gen 1s, and if Desdemona could see Clara like this, Deacon’s pretty sure that she’d be welcomed with the most open of arms.

In the meantime, though, Deacon can only forget that he’s surrounded by the corpses of people he helped train and recruit by talking.

“So what was it like in your vault? All scientific discovery and rationed water?”

Clara shrugs. “I don’t r-remember a lot of i-it. M-mostly just that m-my husband was murdered a-and my son was t-taken.”

She says it nonchalantly, but Deacon sees the way her jaw clenches, how her neck tenses. “Yikes. Talk about the world on your shoulders,” Deacon says. They’re nearing the prototype, Deacon thinks, or at least where it was the last time he knew.

“Y-yep,” Clara says, and it’s muttered, bitter under her breath. “An u-understatement.”

She’s angry and capable and passionate and driven. Clara and the Railroad are a perfect fit if ever there has been one.

Clara always lets Dogmeat draw fire and then picks them off as she can. It’s a sniper’s game, but she plays it with a pistol. Raw, unrefined, but teachable, and with practice, she’ll be more lethal than she even had been at Faneuil Hall when Deacon had seen her plunge her knife into that super mutant. When they finally get into the storage room, and Deacon sighs sadly.

“Tommy,” he says, and it’s as close to a eulogy as Tommy Whispers is probably going to get.

Carrington’s prototype is there, and Deacon picks it up as Clara collects the mini nuke that’s on the shelf to the right of it. Clara either hasn’t noticed Tommy’s gun laying there next to his right hand on the floor or she doesn’t want to appear eager to loot a dead man’s pistol, but Deacon certainly isn’t going to leave it there.

Deacon holds it by the silencer, offering it by the butt of the gun to Clara, and her eyebrows shoot up into the sky again.

“Tommy was a good agent. Great, even,” Deacon says, and Clara still hasn’t reached for the gun. “Consider this a good-faith gift that you’ll perform just as well if not better. Tommy called it Deliverer.” Clara finally takes it, inspecting it carefully before tossing the 10mm she’s been using onto the ground, forgotten, and Deacon continues. “Plus, when you shoot that one, you won’t alert the whole block where we are. You’ve kind of been cramping my style.”

* * *

 

They split up once they’ve made it safely out of the Slocum Joe’s and head their separate ways back to the Old North Church. Clara suspects that Deacon needs to report back independently before she sees Desdemona, and he moves much more quickly on his own anyway (according to Deacon himself, anyway).

Clara’s not sure where she stands with Deacon. She can’t get a read on him; just when she thinks she has, he shifts into something else entirely, like he’s somewhere between person and spirit, but she can’t deny he sings. Deacon doesn’t sing like Nate had, doesn’t make the music swell in that same overwhelming cacophony, but there’s a song to him that makes Clara feel like he’s probably worth keeping around, even if it means playing whatever game he’s set up without her knowing.

When Clara gets back to the church basement, Deacon is extolling her virtue.

“Deacon says he was injured and that you killed at least two dozen synths all while hauling him out of the Switchboard,” Desdemona says, clearly skeptical.

Clara flashes a look at Deacon, who’s holding his right ankle like it’s hurt, and says, “All t-true.”

That takes Desdemona by surprise. “What?”

“I think m-maybe it was twenty-two instead of t-two dozen, but he can’t be b-blamed for his inability to c-count.”

The dark-skinned woman with the minigun snickers, and Deacon pouts in a way that’s just juvenile enough to be almost endearing.

Desdemona sighs. “If that’s the case, then – and it pains me to say this – then Deacon was right. We’re in need of a new heavy anyway. Meet me inside and we can talk details.”

Desdemona turns and disappears into the base that they have, a clear display of trust in turning her back, and Deacon smiles, still sitting next to the woman with the minigun.

“Welcome to the Railroad.”

* * *

 

Desdemona asks what she wants to be called, and Deacon’s interested to hear what she says. Clara asks if Desdemona has any suggestions, and Desdemona says it’s a decision that Clara has to make for herself.

Clara looks Deacon straight in the face, and, without a hint of a stutter, she says, “Atlas.”

Deacon doesn’t get it at first, but remembers what he said in the Switchboard, and it makes a little more sense.

_Yikes. Talk about the world on your shoulders._

What a clever girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wheeeeeee!


	7. you gotta help me

When Deacon asks Glory what she thinks of the situation, Glory says, “I think she’ll last maybe a mission with you as her partner.”

Glory does not have much faith in him. That’s not new; Deacon is invaluable to the Railroad, but everyone in the organization hates his methods, even though his methods are the only thing that got the remains of the Railroad out of the Switchboard. He’s got a good feeling about the vault girl, though. It’s not trust, but it’s faith that she’s just what they need.

“You know,” Deacon says, lazing as best he can on a chair that feels like it might bruise his ass if he sits in it too long, “I’m not usually one for partner work, but I wouldn’t be opposed to keeping a good thing going, if you know what I’m saying.”

There’s an eyebrow waggle there in his voice, but Clara ( _Atlas._ Gotta make the switch, D) either doesn’t notice or elects to ignore it. She acknowledges him with, “I can’t exactly s-stay.”

Deacon knows she’s got work to do, knows that Valentine’s probably nearly ready to impart what information, and, well, Deacon really hates HQ most days anyhow. “My job’s mainly intel,” he says, “Knowing things? I do that best when I’m getting around.” How much innuendo can he slide into a conversation before Atlas acknowledges it?

Atlas stretches, reaching her hands towards the ceiling. She’s tall for a woman, sort of; everyone’s shorter now than they were in the pre-war glory days, and Deacon would peg her at about 5’8”. She’s still angles and lines, their Atlas (she’s _theirs_ now; chalk up another victory for Deacon), and a shiver runs through her body when her arms fall back to her sides. Atlas flicks a glance over him, sizing him up.

“Alright, D-Deacon. Let’s g-go.”

The rest of the Railroad takes to her fairly quickly, or as quickly as an organization such as themselves can. Glory slams a hand on Atlas’s back, a show of camaraderie, but Glory’s probably three times thicker than Atlas is, and the friendly gesture throws Atlas off balance. She stumbles forward, and Glory laughs her deep chortle while Atlas responds with an almost shy giggle.

The Railroad’s not quite a family, but it’s close.

Atlas moves to take the front entrance, but Deacon grabs her by the elbow, planning to steer her towards the back exit. She tenses what little muscle she has, but doesn’t flinch away, and Deacon nods his head towards the tunnel.

“We try to minimize traffic through the front,” he says, and Atlas nods, eyes locked on his fingers around her arm.

* * *

 

Deacon withdraws his hand from Clara’s arm, and Clara feels her body unwillingly relax. No one’s touched her since the bombs fell, not without ulterior motives or a tire iron in their hands. If Clara imagines hard enough, they felt a little like Nate’s fingers, but he’s not Nate, he’s some kind of spy, a freedom fighter, with a penchant for wigs and sunglasses.

Nate’s deployment to Germany had been his first that was not combat-intensive. He would wake up some nights, thrashing, screaming in English that Clara wasn’t yet equipped to understand. The dreams were so vivid they were more like hallucinations, he had said.

That’s what this feels like, watching Deacon’s fingers morph into Nate’s before her eyes. A hallucination. Clara feels herself retreat into her own head, and she doesn’t know how long Deacon has been staring at her before she comes back to reality.

“W-we,” Clara starts, then stops, swallowing heavily and pushing Nate into as remote a corner as she can find inside her mind, “We should h-head back to Sanctuary b-before meeting up with N-Nick in Diamond C-City. Dogmeat deserves a b-break.”

Truthfully, Clara doesn’t want to compete for Dogmeat’s attention with Deacon, who is a little too charismatic for his own good. Dogmeat would probably be happy to walk along between Clara and Deacon forever. Deacon nods. “You got it, boss. Lead the way,” he says, and Clara surveys the Railroad Headquarters one last time before making for the exit.

Clara’s not sure why she accepted Deacon’s offer when there have been any number of people along the way who might have been a better fit that she refused. Nick has the deductive reasoning she needs. Piper has the empathy she wants to feel from literally anyone in this world. Hancock seems to know this world better than most anyone else, even if he’s a little high a lot of the time. Preston would follow her to the ends of the Commonwealth after she agreed to be the General of the Minutemen.

Maybe it’s that swagger she saw when they were clearing the Switchboard, or maybe it’s because Dogmeat didn’t have such an affinity for anybody else they came across. Whatever it is, Amelia had been right; it’s easy to feel a little more confident with allies at her side.

If Deacon had been in Diamond City, Clara wonders if he’d been everywhere else, too.

* * *

 

Atlas picks up weird shit. She picks up literal junk – not “one man’s trash, another man’s treasure,” junk, but Nuka-Cola bottles and broken hot plates. Strangest of all are the toys: board games, little cars, teddy bears, stuffed aliens. Deacon knows her son’s missing, but couldn’t she wait until they’d found him to start weighing them down with this stuff?

She’s resourceful, though, managing to craft a makeshift saddlebag for Dogmeat out of what looks like an old cloth Super Duper Mart bag and twisting up duct tape so that the adhesive doesn’t stick to Dogmeat’s fur when she straps it onto him. Dogmeat loves Atlas so much that Deacon thinks he’d probably run headfirst into the Glowing Sea if she asked him to.

On top of that, the radio on her Pip-Boy is never off. “The yao guai out here don’t like Travis very much, and the music doesn’t suit them much better,” Deacon says once, lightly, and Atlas fixes him with a withering glare that seems out of character with everything else he knows about her. Deacon’s not sure, but he thinks the radio actually sounds louder after that, like she’s turned it up to spite him. How charmingly petty.

They make quick time to Sanctuary Hills. It would have been quicker traveling alone, of course, but Atlas is pretty light on her feet, and Dogmeat keeps up just fine. Atlas’s pace is slower than his might have been, but Deacon’s calling her _boss_ for a reason. On anything not explicitly a Railroad matter, he’s more than happy to follow her lead.

A dark-skinned man swarms Atlas on their arrival in Sanctuary, chattering a mile a minute with a smile on his face like he’s happier to see Atlas than he’s ever been to see anybody. Deacon recognizes him as Preston Garvey, by reputation and demeanor more than by appearance. Back before Preston was the last Minuteman, the Railroad had an uneasy alliance with the Minutemen; they take care of the humans of the Commonwealth, and the Railroad takes care of the synths. Preston’s idealistic, kind, as close to an angel as probably could be found in this world, and despite Deacon’s personal dislike for the Minutemen, he’s not stupid enough to think that the Minutemen wouldn’t make allies the Railroad could turn down.

Preston talks for nearly forty-five seconds without taking a breath, and Atlas’s eyes are saucer-wide and still widening when she holds up a hand.

“P-Preston, I n-need you to slow d-down. It’s hard for m-me to understand things c-coming at me that f-fast.”

Deacon snorts but manages to disguise it as a cough, and when Preston starts again, Deacon pays a little closer attention. There’s a settlement (Greentop Nursery) that needs their (well, the Minutemen’s, or Atlas’s) help with something.

Atlas nods. “We’ll make t-time, Preston. I’m only back for the n-night, to escort Dogmeat h-home and get a rest.”

Preston mimics her nod. “You got it, General. Your friend need a room?” he asks, gesturing to Deacon, who is generally trying to look unassuming.

“If it’s n-not too much trouble. Do we h-have enough b-beds? I could grab Sturges a-and put together a couple before I call it a n-night.”

Preston looks mortally offended at the idea that Atlas should have to do anything the moment she gets back, like he didn’t just tell her that a settlement was in desperate need of assistance. “What do you think we’ve been up to while you were gone, General? There’s plenty of beds and then some.” Preston turns to Deacon and smiles. “Preston Garvey, Minuteman.”

Atlas is watching him intently, wondering how Deacon’s going to introduce himself. Deacon smirks lazily. “Marcus, Diamond City Guard.”

The blush that creeps up Atlas’s neck is so worth it.

* * *

 

She needs to figure out a way to ask, “Were you following me?” without saying so in those words, because Clara’s confident Deacon will lie straight to her face if she just comes out and ask. Clara understands that Deacon doesn’t want anyone to know his affiliation, especially with the Railroad being so vulnerable right now, but he could’ve picked any alias; she knows he _must_ have more than the one. He keeps bringing up Marcus to tease her.

Nate used to make fun of how her _th_ sound in English didn’t have an _h_ on it at all, so _thirsty_ was just _tirsty_. He teased her about it so much that occasionally he would slip up when he didn’t mean to, say _tree_ instead of _three_. Clara’s thankful for his wedding ring in her pocket, a reminder of him, then remembers that she only has that reminder because she peeled it off of his frozen finger. The thought sobers Clara quickly.

“Oh, General,” Preston says, pulling himself away from his conversation with Deacon, who he is escorting to a place with an unoccupied bed. “There’s a woman here who was looking for you, a ghoul from Goodneighbor. Think she’s down by the water.”

Clara’s face lights up, and turns on her heel towards the bridge, and she thinks she hears Deacon chuckle behind her, but she doesn’t particularly care. Her hunch is right; it _is_ Amelia, standing there, looking pensively out over the water. “Lia!” Clara calls out, not wanting to startle her in this world where people are equally as likely to wave as they are to pull a gun when they’re surprised.

Amelia whips around, but relaxes when she notices who it is, and the women meet in the middle. Clara wraps her arms around Amelia, smiling and breathing a greeting. “I’m so glad you c-came,” she says, marveling at how her stutter nearly disappears when Amelia is around.

Amelia grins what once would have been a spectacular smile, one that’s tempered now by the dull black of her eyes and her pocked cheeks. “Well,” Amelia rasps, “I saw Hancock leaving town, and he said – a direct quote – ‘that pretty little vault thing said I could take a walk around her neighborhood.’ I knew I wasn’t going to find much safer traveling company than him.”

Clara smiles, but doesn’t know how much of what Amelia says is true; Amelia has always had a penchant for embellishment that once would have been considered dramatic, but now that Clara’s met Deacon, it seems downright tame. “Did you have much trouble? Getting here, I mean, or once you got h-here? I didn’t really leave a-a note.”

Amelia shrugs. “No more than usual. Your detective friend vouched for Hancock, and Hancock vouched for me.”

Clara’s eyebrows shoot up. “Detective f-friend?”

“Yeah,” Amelia says, “Valentine. Nick Valentine, I think? Came here looking for you, said he’d gotten through something for you a little quicker than he’d planned, but he didn’t know where you were.”

“D-did he say anything else?” Clara asks, a little frantic, and Amelia shakes her head, wary with concern.

“No… Clara, he said he was just going back to his agency in Diamond City. He’ll be there whenever you get there. If he’s dug anything up on Shaun, he’ll still have it. Breathe.”

Clara’s having trouble breathing, but she manages to say, “T-thanks, Amelia, but I think I should probably g-get going.”

“Clara,” Amelia says, and she’s really trying her hardest to say Clara’s name properly, but she can’t, and it stings so much more than it should. Amelia takes Clara’s hands, holds them steady as the rest of Clara shakes. “Don’t do anything stupid. You’re no use to Shaun dead.”

Amelia’s right, but Clara goes looking for Deacon anyway, and she finds him with one bite taken out of a squirrel-kebab, mouth moving a mile a minute chatting with Sturges, who he looks weirdly similar to.

“Change of plans, M-Marcus,” Clara says, barely remembering to slide his pseudonym in place of his Railroad code name. “We’re not g-going to be staying t-the night.”

Deacon’s more game than she expects him to be, hopping up from his seat and saying, “Rain check on dinner, Sturges?”

“Long as you’re buying, Marcus,” Sturges says, as unperturbed as ever.

Deacon grabs his rifle from the seat beside him and shoulders it, but Clara’s not looking, already on her way southeast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday to meeeee hope you guys enjoyed! xx


	8. a beast of a burden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention of attempted infanticide. Nothing graphic.

They don’t sleep except for a couple of stolen minutes on the way back to see Nick. It’s not enough, but Clara pushes on anyway, and Deacon doesn’t try to change the pace.

It’s weird walking into Diamond City with Deacon by her side instead of guarding the gate as Clara slinks in. Clara catches herself, too many times, reaching down to pat Dogmeat and not finding his comforting presence there.

Deacon either doesn’t notice her the first couple times that she reaches for Dogmeat or he doesn’t think it’s comment-worthy until the third time. “If it makes you feel better, boss, you can scratch my head.”

Clara hates the blush that crawls up her neck, every blotch a sign of her own body betraying her, and the betrayal worsens when she sees Deacon smirk at her. The thought flits through her mind that she doesn’t know how old he is. He’s fit, clearly, and a little better fed than the average wastelander, but there are lines that don’t go away when he stops smirking, and if she looks closely at the skin around his sunglasses Clara thinks she can make out a few wrinkles around his eyes, too.

It’s silly to be thinking about this when Nick supposedly has information about where Shaun is, so Clara shakes her head and lengthens her stride. Deacon stays tight on her heels in the bastardized catcher’s uniform that all the Diamond City guards wear, and nobody thinks twice about stopping them until they run into Nat.

“Hey, lady! You’re Piper’s friend?” Nat says, voice a little less abrasive when she lights on Clara’s vault suit. Clara nods, and Nat’s face brightens immensely. “Here! Your interview with my sister sold out, but I saved you a copy!”

Clara doesn’t have the heart to tell Nat that her English reading comprehension is even worse than her spoken English, so she tucks it into her pack and thanks Nat before scurrying away as fast as her legs can carry her.

“Not going to read your debut in the press, Atlas?” Deacon asks, and Clara doesn’t stop walking to answer him.

“B-bigger fish to f-fry, Deacon.” Clara hopes desperately that she is using that idiom right, and she must have been, because she doesn’t think Deacon would have let her get away with it without poking fun if she hadn’t.

Clara stops outside the detective agency, stills herself with a deep breath, and knocks twice on the rickety door. Deacon gives her a look, one with a raised eyebrow to match, and Clara matches her look with her own.

“No one’s knocked since 2077, Atlas,” Deacon says, but they’re interrupted by Nick answering the door.

Nick would look like a detective out of a film if not for the mechanical bits, Clara thinks, and Deacon must have been right. He looks surprised that anyone would be rapping on the door, but Clara hears Ellie behind him say, “Oh, is that Clara? She’s the only one who’s ever knocked. They should really start that practice up again.”

Clara feels the heat come into her face again, but Nick just smiles at her kindly. “Come on in, kid. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Deacon looks at Clara in mock outrage. “I can’t believe that you’d let another man call you kid.”

“I c-can’t believe that y-you never s-stop talking,” Clara shoots back, as snarkily as she can when her stutter seems to worsen whenever there’s a blush on her face.

Nick’s eyes widen in recognition when he sees Clara’s companion. “Deacon. Haven’t seen you ‘round these parts since I lost my Geiger counter.

“Yeah, well,” Deacon says smoothly, “The shop’s kind of out of commission at the moment.”

Nick steps to the side to let them in, and Clara could hit herself. Deacon and Nick make for a logical partnership; of course they know each other. Nick’s a synth on the inside in Diamond City, a place where people generally don’t trust each other even as far as they can throw them, and Deacon’s intelligence network seems to have tendrils everywhere.

Ellie greets Clara with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, affection that’s surprising but not unwelcome. Ellie grips both her shoulders and says, “I’m so glad to see you! Do you want anything to drink?”

Clara shakes her head. Nick says, in what can only be described as a friendly scold, “She didn’t come here for hospitality, El.”

Ellie rolls her eyes, but backs off, and Clara takes a seat. Deacon stands just behind her, and Ellie takes a seat at what is normally Nick’s desk. Every muscle in Clara’s body is tense, and if someone surprised her now, she would easily jump through the shoddy ceiling of Nick’s office.

Nick sighs like he doesn’t know where to begin before leading with, “I found Kellogg.”

* * *

 

Atlas’s back goes ramrod straight when Nick says he knows where Kellogg is. Mumbling something under her breath in that same language that Deacon doesn’t understand, Atlas quiets when Nick acts like he’s going to continue.

“He’s holed up in Fort Hagen, an old army base west of here. I scoped it out a bit. Didn’t get too close, but the place has several turrets up top and it’s crawling with synths. If my pre-war memories serve me right, there’s a command center underneath. Kellogg’s there; I’d put my money on it.”

Atlas nods and stands, making a motion like she’s ready to go and ready to go _now,_ but Nick says, “Wait.”

If Atlas’s hair was ever down from the bun that’s so tight it must give her headaches, it might have whipped her in the face. Deacon marvels at how there’s never a strand out of place. There’s dirt smudged on her face, a rip in her vault suit that exposes skin near her ribs that should be at least covered by raider leathers if nothing else, but her hair stays as close to immaculate as possible at all times.

“You’re no use to your son dead, Clara. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Atlas looks like she’s got a biting remark dancing there just on the edge of her tongue, terror making her want to lash out. Deacon knows how that feels; it’s a defense mechanism. He beats her to the punch, hoping to save her from saying something she might regret to Nick. “I’m the beauty, boss is the brains. I’m plenty of stupid for the both of us.”

It works as a defusal of a bomb that may or may not have been ready to go off, and Ellie grips Atlas tight when Atlas says goodbye. Atlas steps out of the building, and Deacon makes to follow her, but not before Nick can say, “Deacon. Watch out for her.”

Deacon acts like he doesn’t hear, but he files it away, and when the door to Nick’s office swings shut behind him, he asks, “Atlas? Still firing on all cylinders?”

“I d-don’t know what that m-means,” Atlas says, but begins her stride towards the gate. Her legs have to be at least a little shorter than his; Deacon doesn’t know how she’s keeping up that pace, but jogs to catch up with her before falling into stride.

“Was asking if you were okay, boss.”

“P-peachy.”

They don’t exchange words again, ascending from the markets to the wasteland after stopping to pick up every bit of ammo they can afford. If Deacon counts the time, he and Atlas have been on the move for thirty-six hours, and they’ve gotten two hours of sleep between the two of them – an hour for Atlas and an hour for him. Atlas isn’t showing any sign of stopping this pace.

Their subtlety compliments each others’ skillsets. Deliverer is the perfect weapon for Atlas, letting her kill in the mid-range she likes without alerting anyone but the mark she’s already shot to her presence, and if she does get caught, Deacon can almost always take out the person that’s onto her. It’s been a while since he’s worked with a partner long-term (long-term being more than about three days); his last one had been Glory, too many moons ago, and he had known they weren’t going to work out before the op even started.

This feels good. Refreshing, even, like there’s a part of him that had wanted this and he hadn’t even realized it. Whether he deserves this partnership is another thing entirely.

They are a few miles from Fort Hagen when Atlas’s gait slows. She still shows no sign of stopping, but Atlas has slowed down and she is breathing more heavily than she has the last forty-eight hours now.

“Atlas.”

When he says her codename the first time, she doesn’t respond, just lightly picking her steps forward.

“ _Atlas._ ” When Deacon calls out a second time, she hears him, and the fire is still there in her eyes but it’s dulled to an ember. She’s exhausted, and on the verge of tears, terrified for her son.

“We c-can’t stop. My son n-needs me,” Atlas says before he even says another word.

“Your son isn’t going to have anything left but a corpse unless you recover for a minute before you go in after Kellogg.”

Atlas clenches and unclenches her first before looking in the general direction of where Fort Hagen should be. When she looks back to Deacon, her jaw loosens, and Deacon expects an argument, but what he gets from her is, “Okay.”

* * *

 

There’s something a lot like a montage in her head, images flitting in and out that never solidify but are just real enough to make her feel.

The realest image is maybe the first one, Clara lying on a hospital bed with her feet propped up. There are stringy strands of hair clinging to her forehead, matted there by stress, and a few too many doctors there for Clara to feel comfortable. She thinks the baby’s cresting, if the pain on her face is any indicator.

The first night home from the hospital may as well be a nightmare unto itself. Nate isn’t home; Clara can’t remember why, but the baby is crying and she’s got a knife picked up from the kitchen and she’s so tired that she can’t even see straight. Suddenly she’s over the bed with the knife in her hand and all Clara remembers is shame, so much shame that she’s never divulged the fact that she almost killed Shaun herself when he wasn’t even a week old.

The doctor tells her she’s undernourished and, as a result, so is Shaun. He’s lost weight instead of gained it and the fallout between her and Nate afterwards is enough to make Clara wonder if her father was right and she really had made a mistake coming to America at all.

The piano is a bright spot in a dark, dark night, a beautifully tuned masterpiece that brings back songs of Denmark that Clara had worried she might never hear again. Nate even smiles when she plays it, and Shaun stops crying long enough to listen to thirty seconds of music before erupting into tears again.

Clara finally jerks awake when she feels herself hand Shaun over to Nate, this baby she wasn’t even sure she wanted that now she’s scouring the Commonwealth to find, and she’s crying. Clara’s has rivulets running down her face in a way that’s so dramatic it reminds her of a soap opera.  She fell in love with her son somewhere along the line, when he was crying so much that she was getting barely two hours of sleep a night and when breastfeeding was leaving her exhausted and underweight. There’s a part of her that’s incomprehensibly thankful that she didn’t have to relive coming up out of the vault again, rediscovering Sanctuary as a ruin.

She wonders if Deacon heard her, then realizes she doesn’t care. He did hear or he didn’t, and it clicks into place for Clara that she’s grieving, that this has been trauma.

Clara’s never understood the word traumatized before, but she gets it now.

* * *

 

Atlas’s sleep is restless, and Deacon knows a nightmare when he sees one. She gets two hours of sleep before she comes to relieve Deacon of his watch, and Atlas wakes him after six hours.

Her eyes look downright bloodthirsty when she shakes him awake, this clever little vault girl, but her lips and fingers are shaking, and it doesn't seem quite like anger. “Where’s the fire?” Deacon asks, and she’s already packing up camp to get on the move.

“I’m going to kill the man who stole my s-son and made me a widow.”

Atlas’s voice is steady, only wavering on the word _son_. Deacon doesn’t think that this will make her feel any better, killing Kellogg – killing the Deathclaws didn’t bring Barbara back, after all – but he’s also pretty confident that that’s a lesson she has to learn on her own. When the rage fades, pain stays, and he doesn't think Atlas is a stranger to hurting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr @battlemastershepard
> 
> thank you guys so much for reading and i hope that all my american fellows had a wonderful america day xx


	9. i couldn't seem to die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief mention of infanticide again. still not graphic.  
> graphic death, but probably not of anyone you like.

Clara never wore much makeup before the war. Her hands were too shaky, and they still are, tremors from her fingertips to her elbows snaking all the way up to her shoulders and down her spine. The eyeliner always came out crooked, or smudged, the right side perfect and the left eye a veritable raccoon impression.

There’s not much room for cosmetics in this world of radroaches and irradiated sunshine that leaves Clara’s skin so dry she thinks it might crack open. The other military wives had been so beautiful, with their cat eyes and spotless complexions. Amelia must have taken the loss of her favorite pink lipliner terribly. Clara thinks of Amelia now, leathery skin, without even any lips to apply gloss to if she wanted, and shivers. This place is terrifying enough, so far from the pre-war dream Nate had dreamed up for Clara. She can’t imagine what it might be like as a ghoul.

Still, that’s to Clara’s advantage, in a way. She can’t miss what she was never steady enough to use, though Clara wouldn’t turn down a touch of eyeshadow, or something to cover the bags that are beginning to develop underneath her eyes.

Clara doesn’t feel tired except when her feet stop moving, so she walks, and her shadow wearing sunglasses stays close on her tail, even when she’s lost in her head.

* * *

 

Atlas goes non-stop, a hunger in her eyes that would terrify Deacon if she wasn’t on his side. Even though Atlas isn’t more than five feet ahead of him, she seems far away, like if Deacon slipped away she wouldn’t even notice it until he was long gone. She nearly walks into the intensely-fortified Fort Hagen without even realizing that she could have died, and Deacon doesn’t want to know how that might have turned out had Atlas not stolen the few minutes of sleep she found the night before.

“Hey, Atlas,” Deacon says, grabbing her arm to stop her from striding straight into turret-fire, disguising the save as an excuse to show off. “How many of these you bet I can take out before they even notice I’m here?” He gestures to the turrets, and he can count four in plain sight. Deacon’s sure there’s at least twice that hidden out there somewhere, and there’s a Gen-1 patrolling out front as well.

There’s a laugh in her eyes, a twinkle, and for a second Atlas seems almost to forget the hatred that has consumed her the last forty-eight hours. “A man of your a-auspicious talent?” _Auspicious_ makes her stumble, like it’s a word Atlas read in a book somewhere and has only heard said out loud once or twice. “All four and the synth p-patrolling out front, or G-Glory’s my new partner,” she says, and it’s light enough that Deacon thinks she’s almost forgot they’re stalking her son’s kidnapper – but no, the hunger is still there. The hunger is right alongside the light, but she smiles nonetheless.

Deacon sets up shop a little to the west, leaving Atlas where they’d first approached the fort. There’s a bit of a cliff on that side, with a little bit of shrubbery coverage and a good view of most of Fort Hagen. Before looking down the scope, he glances towards Atlas, who waves good-naturedly from her crouched position.

Deacon holds up an open palm; five fingers, one for each target (four turrets, one synth), and places one eye close to the glass after Atlas gives him a thumbs up in response. The synth’s the primary target. It feels a lot like murder, killing these synths, ones made to believe whatever the Institute wants them to believe, but it’s a necessary evil, and with Tommy out of commission and Glory understandably wanting only to be used as a last resort for missions like these, the task usually falls to Deacon.

The synth is the primary target because it can send off a signal to alert the turrets to where they are, something electromagnetic that Tom thinks is evidence that the Institute’s everywhere. Maybe he’s right. Deacon’s not one to argue with the only guy qualified to mod every rifle just how Deacon likes it. The synth walks, but predictably, and it’s easy enough to send one bullet sailing through the air and watch it come out on the other side of its head. Briefly, Deacon wonders what its designation was. The process is easier with the first two turrets. They’re immobile and they don’t react nearly quickly enough to find his location, but his thoughts keep lingering on how easily the bullet had blown through the circuitry in the Gen-1’s head. The distraction is enough for his bullet to glance off the combat inhibitor of the turret instead of burying into it.

Atlas reacts quickly, tossing one of several grenades she’d bought from Arturo in the turret’s general direction. In a stroke of luck, it takes out the one Deacon had managed to offend, and Deacon takes out the last visible turret as well.

When Deacon finds his way back to her side, Atlas chuckles. “Glory’s at _least_ as cute as you, a-and I bet she’s a better s-shot.”

Her accent’s as thick as ever, but the stutter diminishes by the day, so Atlas must at least be coming to tolerate, if not enjoy, his company. Deacon clicks his tongue conspiratorially. “Cuter, maybe, but a better shot? I don’t think so. You know, I once singlehandedly saved Hancock from an assassination attempt involving four super mutants and a mini nuke?”

“B-before or after you set off every turret in the v-vicinity?”

Deacon whistles. “Cold, Atlas. Too cold,” he says, as his eyes graze across the scar peeking out from the neck of her vault suit.

* * *

 

Clara’s thankful for her codename. It means she doesn’t have to listen to every wastelander in the Commonwealth butcher her name. Hearing it before the bombs fell was both alienating and endearing, a reminder of how she and Nate came from whole different worlds in ways that were good as well as bad. Here, whenever the name Clara rolls off someone’s lips, it is mangled and thick and clumsy, like trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube.

She misses toothpaste.

Deacon hangs back as she pushes through the base, covering her when she needs it and picking off unaware targets whenever he can. It takes an hour just for them to fight their way to the second level, and once they hit that, resistance picks up heavily.

“Hey, Atlas,” Deacon starts, lazy-sounding as ever, even when he’s just picked off a synth’s head at close to a hundred meters away, “What are you actually going to do when we find Kellogg?”

Clara sees red just at the mention of Kellogg’s name – _tear his head off, strangle him, kick in the stomach until he bleeds_ – and the reaction is so emotional that she actually forgets to answer him to begin with. Unsure how much of this feeling is a mother’s visceral response to the trauma of losing a child and how much of it is the brutality of the Commonwealth poisoning her, Clara simply says, “I’ll play it by e-ear.”

Amazingly, her fatigue is gone, disappeared entirely in the haze of fury thinking of Kellogg brings on. Clara hopes they find the mercenary soon, before this adrenaline works its way out of her system and she’s left with nothing but the crash.

They delve deeper and deeper into the place, so far that at some point Clara quits thinking of it as a building and as a compound. Deacon’s eyes flit towards her every now and then, though she can’t pick out what specifically he’s looking at because the sunglasses are so dark. Clara isn’t even sure how he sees through them in here, a place that seems to be running on its fourth and final backup generator. There’s an elevator in front of them now, and the whirring of gears that lets them know whenever a Gen-1 is near is conspicuously absent.

 “ _Så går vi_ ,” she says, a mumble to herself that Deacon just so happens to hear.

“Hmm?” he asks, but Clara knows he heard. He didn’t understand, but he heard, and he’s being nosy (not that she expects anything else of him).

“I suppose i-in this context it means something l-like, ‘here we go,’ but it t-translates funny.”

 _What would Nate do if he were here with you?_ a voice in the back of Clara’s head muses, and she mourns that it speaks in English and not her native tongue.

She looks at Deacon, and it’s impossible not to size him up in comparison to her spouse when they are searching for her and Nate’s son. Nate is – _was_ – taller, broader, and she’d never seen him with a weapon in his hand except the one time he’d taken her to a shooting range.

She’ll think about Deacon later, Clara muses, and steps into the elevator in front of them, waiting for Deacon to follow suit. Nate’s not here, and she will take every scrap of help she can get.

* * *

 

Deacon’s pretty sure that Kellogg’s somewhere at the bottom of wherever this elevator leads. For Atlas’s sake, he hopes that Shaun is with him.

The first time Kellogg’s voice crackles over the intercom, Atlas freezes and swings around wildly with Deliverer. She finds no one but Deacon, who says, “Remember that saying about not biting the hand that feeds you? I _gave_ you that gun, boss.”

“Look at you. All thawed out, and there’s even a little meat left on you.” Atlas’s body tenses, all springs and gears ready to let loose potential energy, and Kellogg continues. “Can’t believe I left alive the only person in the Commonwealth determined enough to track me down.”

 _Thawed out_? That’s one to file away for later, Deacon thinks. He doesn’t have much time to mull it over, because Atlas is on the move again, pushing forward at breakneck speed. They tear forward, swiftness incarnate, and Deacon keeps pace with her except the one time he trips over some synth wiring that Atlas hacked free from a Gen-1’s general spine area.

Atlas stops for the briefest of moments and raises an eyebrow at him. It’s something that looks like concern, and Deacon manages to say, “It’s these old bones,” before Atlas takes off again. He’d been worried Atlas wouldn’t be able to keep up with the brutality of the Commonwealth, but she’s giving him a run for his money, even if it’s only because she’s desperate for information about her son.

The second time they hear Kellogg’s voice flicker into the air around them, Atlas doesn’t stop. She keeps moving forward, and the voice follows them, a ghost haunting them as they go further and further into the base.

“I can’t say I regret killing your husband, but he really wasn’t much more than collateral damage. Actually, I could say the same for you, because if you turn back now, you won’t have to wind up like him. Forget you were ever here, and I won’t have to orphan your son.”

Deacon sees the tears prick at the corners of Atlas’s eyes, and looks away out of reflex. Part of him wants to bug out; the rest of him (the part Barbara loved) thinks that he would only make himself an even more vile excuse of a human being if he abandoned her here.

Still, being flight personified has saved Deacon countless times, and he’s weighing the possibilities still when he hears Atlas speak. “Kellogg shot my husband in front of me and I-I was helpless. One s-shot to his temple, and then someone in a-a radiation suit took our crying baby away. I beat at the glass and felt like a-a fish in an aquarium. K-Kellogg called me the backup, s-smirked at me, and walked away.”

“That’s, uh,” Deacon starts, pauses, thinks maybe he’s not qualified to be here after all, “That’s heavy, boss.” It’s a lame response, and not even characteristically lame. Before he can mourn his lack of a witticism, Atlas speaks again.

“That’s why I’m going to kill him,” she says, and it’s simple, not a stutter in a hundred yard radius, before continuing forward like the momentary tears Deacon saw build never happened.

Deacon sighs, and follows, because if this doesn’t kill him, it’s going to make a hell of a story.

By the time they come to what looks like an antechamber, they’ve blown through (by Deacon’s estimation) fifty synths and twice as many turrets.

“He’s in t-there,” Atlas says, quietly, like a whisper, “I c-can feel it.”

As if on cue, they hear him again, and he sounds almost resigned. “Well, my frozen friend, you’ve come this far. Let’s talk.”

_Frozen?_

Atlas’s eyes narrow, and the door in front of them unlocks with a _click_. She doesn’t look back to make sure Deacon is following her before she begins down the hallway. Deacon follows anyway, despite a nagging feeling that he thinks is probably his better judgment.

* * *

 

When Clara sees Kellogg, she is possessed by an overwhelming need to punch him so hard that his head spins. It is only the fact that he is her _only_ lead as to her son’s whereabouts that stops her.

“There she is,” Kellogg says, hands up in a universally peace-seeking gesture, “The most determined woman in the Commonwealth.”

“C-cut the s-shit, K-Kellogg,” Clara says, cursing her voice for wavering.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Kellogg asks, and it feels like a mockery, and Clara’s eyes are little wider than slits. She’s vaguely aware that Deacon’s rifle is probably trained on Kellogg, and is thankful for it even if she doesn’t quite trust the freedom fighter yet.

“ _Vi kan godt snakke på_ _dansk i stedet for, hvis du vil,”_ Clara says, and it’s a sneer; _we can speak Danish instead, if you like._

“Huh,” Kellogg says, hands still up, “No wonder the kid’s so smart. We didn’t know much about you, just your husband – standard military jock.”

“ _Don’t_ talk about N-Nate,” Clara says like a warning, as if she has any leverage besides Deacon’s combat skill to hold up. “Just… t-tell me where my s-son is. W-where can I f-find Shaun?”

The tears crop up like a weakness, and they blur her vision in such a way that Kellogg almost looks sad. “You know…” he says, “I find myself almost liking you. I think you might even have made a good mother.”

It’s too much; Clara feels the tears hit her face, and she manages a, “Fuck. You. Kellogg,” when he takes a breath before finishing.

“Shaun’s with the Institute. He’s happy. Isn’t that enough?”

The tears have dried in Clara’s eyes, though she can taste the salt from those that have managed to slide down her cheeks into her mouth. _The Institute_. Somewhere behind her, a voice that sounds faraway but is unmistakably Deacon’s says, “Shit,” and Clara moves towards his voice, towards the cover he’s set up behind.

“I-in a hundred years,” Clara starts, still walking backwards, “when I d-die…” Clara breathes out, reaches into her pocket, and feels the frag grenade there. “I hope I g-go to hell, so I c-can kill you all over again.”

She pulls the pin on the grenade and throws it in Kellogg’s general direction, hoping at least to maim his two synth bodyguards if nothing else. It works better than expected. One is blown to bits, and the second is left legless. Deacon picks off its immobile head like it’s nothing.

“Wow, boss,” Deacon says as Clara tries to find her bearings, “If I’d known you had such a flair for the dramatic, I never would’ve thought our meeting was just a coincidence.”

Clara giggles despite herself, because there’s a kind of bloodlust to battle, a primal feeling that she’d be ashamed to explain to Nate, or her mother, or her father the potato farmer. Nate might have understood, but he was a soldier that had found a pretty little housewife, and here with Deacon, Clara feels a little bit like a warrior.

If she wasn’t so desperate to find Shaun, Clara might even say she finds this wild, dangerous stunt halfway fun. She smirks at Deacon, and he grins back, and the thought strikes Clara that even though she doesn’t trust him, she might actually have a friend in this clusterfuck these people call the Commonwealth.

When Clara’s ears quit ringing from the grenade, she briefly pops out of cover. Kellogg is nowhere to be found, and Deacon yanks her back down next to him. Clara sputters, offended, and Deacon mutters, “Stealth,” before laying his rifle down and opting for a pistol of his own. Clara motions that she’ll cover the right side and he nods, content to cover the left.

When Clara makes a dash for the next spot of cover, gunfire opens from ahead of the both of them. A pistol whizzes past her, and she isn’t sure if it’s adrenaline or if it’s really so close that she can actually feel it above her left shoulder. Still, the gunfire is enough to alert Deacon to Kellogg’s position, and when he fires three rounds in what seems like the right direction, they hear a grunt. Kellogg flickers back into vision, and it looks like two of Deacon’s rounds hit home without him ever having to leave his original spot.

Clara drops Deliverer and sprints forward, figuring that if Kellogg can disappear again that it’s probably just best to be attached to him. The knife she used to kill the super mutant back at Faneuil Hall is still in her boot, and when Clara leaps for the takedown, she draws it. Kellogg’s stronger than her, and when he hits the ground he sounds more metal than man, but before he can react she plants it in the closest piece of not-metal flesh she can find.

Clara impales the skin where shoulder meets chest, and this time Kellogg’s grunt sounds more like a yell. The knife goes in again and again and again: his chest, his neck, his chest again, and he struggles less with every stab of the knife. Clara doesn’t notice when Kellogg goes completely immobile, and she can’t hear Deacon saying, “Atlas. Atlas, he’s dead. _Atlas._ ”

When Deacon touches her shoulder, it’s like reality comes back into focus. “He’s actual mincemeat, Atlas,” Deacon says now that she’s tuned back into the world, and for a brief moment Clara remembers that first night home from the hospital when all she wanted was to sleep, even if it meant killing Shaun with that kitchen knife.

Clara is straddling Kellogg’s body, and her knife falls to the floor, dropping from her now limp hand. She thinks Deacon is standing behind her, and when Clara looks down, Clara isn’t even sure she can count high enough to number the stab wounds on his torso. Clara’s blood runs cold when she feels how much of Kellogg’s is all over her (she thinks she can taste it, warm and wet and vile in her mouth), and suddenly the adrenaline is gone.

When the tears start flowing, Clara doesn’t know if they’ll ever stop. She’s vaguely aware of Deacon checking the perimeter, but the tears keep flowing and flowing and flowing until Clara feels so drained that there is nothing else to give.  Clara isn’t even sure what she’s crying for. Is it because Shaun isn’t here? Is it because Shaun’s with the resident Commonwealth boogeyman? When Clara realizes it isn’t because of either of those things, she cries harder, because she has mutilated a man and is still sitting in his blood, covered in what isn’t pooling on the floor .The world goes black, and she doesn’t even have time to worry about taking watches, or the fact that she’s trusting Deacon to watch her back without triple-checking in advance. They've been on the move for over forty-eight hours and if she never wakes up again, Clara thinks she might finally be happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi wauw sorry it took me so long to come back to y'all. we've had a time, lemme tell ya, here comes the excuse express
> 
> my dad was (briefly) hospitalized (heart palpitations, he is k)  
> my work is being an ass  
> i put in a koi pond with my dad and husband i'm v tired
> 
> anyway that's all for the excuse express hopefully i'll get back to updating normally again thank you for reading! come find me @battlemastershepard.tumblr.com!! xx


	10. take a break

_Everything is dark, but there is music, and it’s like Clara can see the song rather than hear it. From the dark there are flashes of green, yellow, red, blue; there are minor, major chords, crescendos that rise from the abyss to fill the empty dark. If she listens hard enough, it sounds a little like the piano that’s sitting back in Sanctuary, miserably out of tune no matter how badly Clara would like to play it. Clara tries to look down, but can’t see her hands, only blackness interspersed with brief sparks of clarity._

_“My darlin’,” she hears, a seductive red against a too-dark backdrop, “Why are you here?”_

_Clara stiffens the second that she hears darling, Nate’s pet name for her. His voice sings, and Clara comes back into herself long enough to choke out a sob, a swelling that rises from her throat and escapes. Nate flickers into view, and Clara feels his arms wrap around her torso. The song wails, reverberating through Clara’s body as she folds into his body._

_“Oh,_ min elskede _,” Clara feels like she’s going to collapse. Her legs are jelly, threatening to give out at any point in time._

_“You know you can’t stay, darlin’,” Nate says, and he looks like a specter when her eyes finally manage to focus in on him. He’s there, but he isn’t solid; she can’t see through him, but Clara thinks if she stuck a hand out it would go right through his chest. She’s never thought of Nate as having much of an accent, but every American she ever met was from Boston; how would she know? He drops the_ g _from_ darling _and it’s like she’s home again._

_“How come?” Clara asks, pushing away all thoughts of how he’s warm but cold at the same time as well as the fact that her stutter is nowhere in the picture._

_Nate sighs, and he smells like pine and white picket fences. “It’s not real, darlin’. It’s not real.”_

_Clara shakes her head and takes a step away from him, out of his warm arms and back into the blackness that seems to have swarmed them without her even realizing it._

_“Don’t forget to smile, Clara,” Nate says, in the mangled way he always tried to say her name, “It’s not all that bad here, and you’re far too young to be miserable every second you’re alive.” Hands pull at her back, her legs, her own hands-_

Clara bolts awake and fumbles for the knife next to her violently. Deacon takes three steps backwards, hands shooting up from her arm where he'd shaken her awake in a universal sign of surrender, innocence. “Whoa, boss,” he says, and Clara lowers the knife almost as quickly as she’d managed to find it.

“S-sorry, Deacon,” Clara says, and she means it, “You startled m-me.”

Clara doesn’t think she’s ever seen Deacon’s real smile, just the blinding smirk that never seems to be quite genuine, the one he gives to her now. “No harm, no foul, boss,” he says, with that smirk that probably wouldn’t reach his eyes if she could see them. “Didn’t know if twelve hours was long enough to give you to rest up, but I figured muscle atrophy was going to start setting in if I didn’t wake you up.”

_Atrophy_ is a word that Clara doesn’t recognize, almost medical sounding, but it’s melodious, too, and she didn’t die while she slept half a day away.

Clara knows a turning point when she sees it, and, tentatively, Clara places her trust in Deacon enough to appear weak for even a moment.

“Um,” Clara says before chewing on her lip nervously. Asking what words mean feels weak, like she’s not bright enough to figure it out on her own, but she swallows the little pride she has left and asks, “What d-does that mean?”

Deacon arches an eyebrow, and Clara thinks he probably doesn’t know what a leap it is for her to ask. “Hmm? What does what mean?”

He’s really going to force her to ask flat-out, and Clara’s not stupid enough to think that that isn’t intentional. “Atrophy,” Clara says, the word chunky like it doesn’t quite fit in her mouth, “I’ve n-never heard that w-word before.”

* * *

 

The blush crawls up Atlas’s neck the second she asks what “that” means, and Deacon’s pretty confident that she’s asking about _atrophy_ , but the fire in her face is cute, so he asks for clarification. It’s a success; her whole face goes red, and she looks down at her feet, stumbling over her words even more than usual.

It’s the first time she’s willingly asked for his help, and calling it a paradigm shift feels dramatic but not altogether wrong.

“Oh, atrophy,” Deacon says, a drawl that won’t fool her, “It’s like the process of wasting away.”

“Oh,” Atlas says, looking thoughtful, though the blush doesn’t fade from her face, “Like in astronauts.” It’s not a question, but a statement, and Deacon’s a little surprised by that. Most people’s minds wouldn’t jump to astronauts, probably.

He extends a hand to Atlas, because she’s still on the ground. Kellogg’s blood has mostly dried except for the pool, and it stains the lining of her vault suit. The bloodshed had affected Atlas dramatically earlier, but she seems less concerned with it now, though she refuses to look at the pool. She does, however, turn to what’s left of Kellogg’s body, stab wounds still clearly visible. Deacon doesn’t think Atlas regrets them, and also doesn’t think she _should_ regret them; Kellogg was nothing more than a scourge on the ‘Wealth.

She crouches over Kellogg’s body, looking for anything worth taking, and Deacon leans on his rifle as she does. “Man was more metal than human at this point.”

Atlas nods, but doesn’t respond other than that. She gingerly picks at the corpse, grabbing Kellogg’s pistol first and offering it by the butt to Deacon. The artificial light shines off her wedding ring, and Deacon shakes his head despite being somewhat impressed by the altruistic gesture.

“Nah, boss. To the victor go the spoils, and all that,” Deacon says, and Atlas purses her lips, unimpressed. Deacon shrugs. “Pistol’s more your game anyway. Someone’s gotta cover you while you’re acting stupid.”

Atlas exhales a laugh. “You s-sound like my f-father,” she says, putting Kellogg’s pistol in her pack and dropping the pipe pistol she never touched in its place. Gathering the last few cybernetic pieces (along with brain matter she seems to be ignoring), Atlas moves to stand. Deacon stretches a hand out accordingly, and she takes it without a second thought.

“Your dad a sniper, too?” Deacon asks, and Atlas gets that faraway look on her face that no one else could replicate if they tried.

“N-no,” she finally says, after a too long pause, “He just s-spent a lot of time cleaning up after my m-mother and I.” Atlas does a quick final survey of the room, and looks at Deacon again, trying to make eye contact through his sunglasses. “T-thanks, Deacon, for keeping watch. I feel… b-better.”

Deacon flashes her a smirk, shrugs, and says, “I only kept watch for as long as it took me to secure the doors, then dozed off in the corner that smelled the least like violence.”

Atlas chuckles, and it’s genuine, almost even sweet, and Deacon thinks that sleep really doesn’t get enough credit for all it can do. “What’s the plan, boss?” he asks.

She sighs, scuffing the toe of her boot on the ground. “W-wherever I can w-wash this vault suit is top p-priority,” Atlas says pettily. “Diamond City isn’t _too_ far if we’re both as r-rested as we think we are. We can c-check in with Nick and see if he has any i-ideas.”

Deacon nods, and says, “Far be it from me to tell you how to run your show, but if your son is with the Institute, you’re going to need a lot more caps to get the kind of resources necessary for that kind of infiltration.”

“I agree,” Atlas says, nodding in unison and going silent. She looks thoughtful for a moment. “Your job in i-intel lend you any l-leads on the best place for caps?”

“Aw, boss,” Deacon says, unable to keep the smile out of his voice, “Never thought you’d think to take advantage of my talents.”

* * *

 

By the time they are back in Diamond City, Clara’s figured out that just because she considers Deacon a friend now doesn’t mean he’s going to stop lying to her. In fact, if anything, his lies get even _more_ outrageous.

“And then; boom -” Deacon says, punching a fist into his own open palm for emphasis, “My grenade flies straight into Glory’s, sends up every super mutant for three miles. Dez wasn’t sure if she should be proud or infuriated.”

Clara laughs. She never knows what to do when Deacon’s spinning a story, so she just laughs. So far, Deacon’s accepted her thick accent and explains the few words she works up the nerve to ask a definition of. There’s no reason to split hairs over what seems to be his defining character trait, especially when Clara’s pretty certain there’s at least a sliver of truth in every one.

It feels good to laugh. Her dream ( _hallucination_ , a vile little voice in the back of her mind wails) of Nate had been right; Shaun is still missing, and she’s taking on an evil at least a hundred times her size, but her heart aches a little less when Clara can find a reason to laugh. Deacon can almost always give her a reason.

Clara readies herself to shell out the caps for a room at the Dugout Inn. They aren’t going to be staying too long, but Clara desperately needs the shower, no matter how cold it is, and she can only afford one room, but Deacon strides to the counter first. “Vadim!” he bellows, arms open wide towards the barkeep.

“Ah, Marcus,” Vadim says, in an accent almost as thick as Clara’s herself, “What brings you to our little establishment?”

“Wanted to see if I could bother you to make good on that favor,” Deacon (Marcus right now, Clara muses) says, leaning on the bar. Vadim’s cheeks go pink, and Deacon continues, “I need a couple of rooms for my friend and I.”

“Ahhh, my friend,” Vadim says, scratching at the back of his neck, “I do owe you the favor, but I can’t afford to give out two rooms for free. This is still a business after all.”

Deacon sighs, braces himself against the bar, and says, “Vadim, we had a deal…”

As Deacon’s voice drifts off, Vadim chews on his lower lip before throwing his hands up. “Fine, but only the one room. It’s the only one unoccupied.”

Deacon shoots Vadim the smirk Clara knows all too well, and leads the way to their room. _Their room_ sends a shiver up her spine, like Nate can see her from wherever he is in the beyond. It’s innocent, of course, their sharing a room, a thing of necessity, but it’s hard to shake the feeling when Clara feels Nate’s fingers on her skin every time she closes her eyes for more than a brief second.

“You want t-the shower first, Deacon?” Clara asks, and Deacon raises an eyebrow.

“Um, you’re the one still covered in blood, boss.”

Clara blushes, and she hates it. “Y-yes, but you did all the w-work.”

Deacon scoffs and ushers her towards the small shower in an almost matronly way, and Clara thanks him once more before shutting the rotting bathroom door. The door doesn’t reach all the way to the ceiling, and if she speaks loudly enough, Deacon can still hear her even with the shower running.

“What f-favor were you calling in with V-Vadim?”

“Oh, you know,” Deacon says, and there’s a sigh in his voice that tells her his answer will be a lie, “Vadim was caught in bed, quite literally, with the mayor’s assistant, and, well, I kept things quiet for him.”

Clara laughs, peeling the vault suit from her body, and somehow, talking to him while in various states of undress doesn’t feel intimate so much as natural. Deacon continues on with his story, white noise behind something that Clara never thought she’d be thankful for – a cold shower. Diamond City boasts running water, but running isn’t warm, and it isn’t always clean, but the Dugout Inn’s doesn’t run rusty red, so Clara will take it.

Clara and Nate had sex several times before marriage; hell, Shaun was conceived during one of those times.

The third time they slept together, Clara remembers, they had been in a shower, but it was nothing like this one. They were still in Denmark, then, and the shower was probably as small as this one, but cleaner, and the water was warm –

Clara doesn’t dwell on it. The water’s too cold anyway, and when she thinks about Nate she can almost feel him, hear him, see him.

“Atlas?” she hears, and Nate’s never called her that, but still.

“ _Elskede?”_ Clara responds before she can think, stepping out of the shower and slipping into some of the clean cotton clothing she’d purchased on the way to the inn.

“Uh, charming as your little secret language is, not sure what that meant,” Nate’s voice says, but it’s not Nate’s voice anymore.

Clara chokes; what a stupid mistake. Of course Nate’s not here. “Oh. S-sorry, Deacon, was lost in my h-head.” She leaves her bloody vault suit in the remnants of what used to be a sink, and slides out of the bathroom. “All yours, Deacon,” she says, and he nods, holding his hand up for a high five. Clara obliges, and he shuts the door behind him.

“You know,” he says from the tiny room with the shower in it, “I can’t place your accent. I’ve been trying since we started traveling together and I’m beginning to think you’re just a malfunctioning synth that needs a new voice chip or whatever.”

Clara chuckles, and remembers a television show Nate used to watch before the bombs fell. “It’s a t-trait all your new alien overlords w-will have. ‘T-take me to your leader’ and all t-that.”

There’s a bark of a laugh from Deacon’s direction that sounds almost genuine. “Look at that, you can crack a joke after all. I have to write President Eden immediately.”

They’ll go and visit Nick in an hour or two after Clara’s gotten over mistaking Deacon’s voice with Nate’s, after her vault suit is clean and dry and she isn’t in clothes that make her feel exposed to every threat in the wasteland. For now, though, she’ll nurse the camaraderie she has with Deacon, and forget how rough around the edges this world is.

Deacon lists off a few rumors he's heard, and Clara hears them but barely. It's hard to focus on the idea of caps when Nate's voice flirts dangerously with Deacon's, and Clara knows that that's why she wanted him as a partner and not Hancock or Piper or Nick; her mind lets her confuse him with her dead, frozen, murdered husband and because of that, this liar is a guilty comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *frantic waving*  
> hi!!!! i love you!!!  
> in case you haven't checked me out come stroke my ego @battlemastershepard.tumblr.com xx thanks for reading!!


	11. make you freak out

Nick has a distinctly human way of pinching the bridge of his nose when he’s irritated or at a loss. Clara thinks he’s probably a little bit of both when she explains what happened with Kellogg. “So… you killed him.” What Nick says isn’t a question, it’s a statement, and the indignation burns red-hot in Clara’s stomach.

“I’d do it a-again,” Clara says, not a little defensively. Nick sighs.

“I’m not saying I blame you, kid, I’m just saying it makes our job a little harder,” Nick says, “We knew the Institute was _probably_ involved, but now we know that they _are_ involved, and on top of that, the only man with a concrete connection to the Institute is dead.”

Deacon’s behind her, somewhere; Clara hears him groan out an exaggerated yawn, and she doesn’t know what to say to Nick.

“Don’t know about you, Valentine, but I’m not gonna miss him,” Deacon says when the silence stretches out too long, lighting up a cigarette so he mirrors Nick. Clara wrinkles her nose. There are much bigger things to complain about in this world – brutality, the environment, how the cockroaches are ten times the size they should be – but Clara’s still working on getting over the cigarettes.

Nick notices the look on her face, and chuckles, grinding the cigarette out. “My girl – well, Valentine’s girl – used to call these ‘cancer sticks.’ She hated them, but you’ll have to give an old bot his vices.”

“Didn’t mean to be s-so transparent. Sorry, N-Nick.”

Nick shrugs ( _no big deal_ ) and looks down at the cybernetics and brain matter Clara’s put on display on his desk. “One of our – my and Deacon’s – mutual friends might be able to help us-”

Deacon gets too serious too fast, almost uncharacteristically so. “We can’t bring any more attention to Goodneighbor right now. They’re sitting on _three synths_ and the doc is already backlogged trying to put together memories for all three of them.”

Clara could cry. Every time she thinks they’re getting closer to a solution there’s a speedbump, a roadblock.

Nick puts his hands up in a sign of surrender, one he usually is giving to Ellie when he won’t give in to her mothering. “Wasn’t going to say to do it _right now_. If we wait a few weeks for Goodneighbor to cool off and float a message to Amari in the meantime saying that we need help with something big, that’ll give you two time to keep preparing for the eventual infiltration.”

Clara blanches. A few weeks is too long, the voice in her head is screaming, but a chillier voice says that if Shaun’s been okay without her help for this long, he’ll be alright for a little longer. Clara swallows hard, bunches her fingers into the fabric of her vault suit, and nods. “Okay. D-Deacon had a couple l-leads on some caps we c-could make.”+-

Nick gives her a look that suggests he knows she’s feeling what can only be described as turmoil. “Look, kid, we’ll figure this out. You’ve already gotten farther than anybody else.”

Deacon has the distinct advantage of appearing completely unaffected by literally everything, and leaving Nick’s office is no different. “Probably the most lucrative of our potential engagements would be the rumor leading out to Cabot House. The Cabots are about as nutty as they come, but the ghoul that does most of their running is always loaded with caps. Deegan, I think his name is; I ran into him in Bunker Hill awhile back, and he said that Cabot House was paying if I was willing to do good work.”

Clara snorts. “ _Good work_. I k-know that doesn’t mean h-honest.”

“Oh, Atlas!” Deacon says, fanning himself dramatically for effect. “Your vault hasn’t left you completely ill-equipped for this world after all.” Deacon’s stride doesn’t change, but he continues in a bit lower voice, “Not that I’d want to do _honest_ work, per se, but well, you know.”

Clara rolls her eyes. Somehow, the fact that Deacon doesn’t lie about being a liar makes him all the more trustworthy, because Clara can at least trust that at any given time Deacon probably isn’t telling the truth. The only constants in this world have been his deception and Dogmeat’s devotion.

Just when she thinks that, Deacon throws her for a loop. He pauses, just where the stairs out of Diamond City crest, and when he doesn’t make any moves to continue, Clara feels her eyebrow inching higher.

“Look,” Deacon finally says, and his voice drops a little. Just when Clara thinks she can always trust Deacon to lie to her, his voice sounds suspiciously close to truth-telling.  “We’ve been traveling together a little while now, right? I’m used to flying solo, but I have to admit, working with you makes me think I’ve been missing out.”

This is weirdly genuine, and Clara’s on the defensive immediately. “Y-you’ve never had a partner?” The blaring of a song Clara doesn’t recognize should make her wary, but it doesn’t. Maybe that’s his truth-song, as cliché as that sounds, and Clara has only just decided Deacon is a friend. What kind of friend would she be if she didn’t at least hear him out?

“Well, not for a long time,” Deacon says, scratching the back of his head that Clara would mistake for sheepish if she hadn’t been breathing the same air. “Most people are worried that a partner’s just another target on their back, or someone else to rat them out to the Institute.”

“T-target on their b-back?” Clara leads the way forward instead; Deacon’s stopped, but Clara sees no reason that they can’t walk and talk.

“Well,” Deacon says, with that windy sigh that Clara is about 90% sure is a tell, “What I mean is, most people have someone that the Institute can use against them. I guess the point of all this is that you seem like the kind of person that wouldn’t sell a guy out. Means a lot to a synth, especially because the people who Glory and I choose as partners are the only ones who really know us.” Deacon pauses and chews on his lip, turning his head left and right like he’s trying to see if anyone’s listening.

Clara’s head reels back slowly in something in between disbelief and fascination.

* * *

 

Deacon’s eyes track back to that mysterious scar on Atlas’s neck, uneven and red like it’s still fresh.

He’s got her. Deacon’s sure he’s completely sold Atlas on this; she’s gaping like a fish, and before she can recover he initiates the second phase of the lie. “Anyway, I was going somewhere with this,” Deacon says, scratching his cheek. “Oh, yeah. I wanted to give you this. All synths come programmed with a recall code, something that can be used to wipe us completely clean, in case we become… I think the word was _compromised._ In the event that I become compromised, and the Institute tries and succeeds to turn me against the Railroad, I want you to use that.”

Curiosity burns in Atlas. Deacon can see it clawing at her, its fingers melting into hers. Atlas’s eyes never leave Deacon’s face, but the second he places the note in her hands, she starts unfolding it almost subconsciously.

“ _Whoa_ , there, boss,” Deacon says, a picture perfect imitation of worry. He leans forward, clenching Atlas’s hands in his and crumbling the paper between them. “Between you and me, reading that out loud would make me a completely blank slate, so if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you not even look unless you have to.”

Atlas’s face goes so red that Deacon thinks she’s going to melt the second they make skin to skin contact. He gives her hands a little extra squeeze for good measure, and Atlas exhales in what Deacon would almost describe as a little gasp when he moves away. The vault girl is sweet, and there’s a beauty to her even if she’s not conventionally pretty (too thin, bland hair, and a snore that could wake a _bear_ ), but Deacon doesn’t want anything from anybody, especially not a grieving widow who can’t find her son.

If Deacon were to ask a professional, they might say he was a grieving widower who was mourning the children he was never able to have, but if he and Atlas are comparing traumas, who’s counting?

* * *

Against Clara’s better judgment, she believes his story. Every precedent would tell her that this story is a lie, but it explains so much about him. Deacon’s apathy, his almost clinical skill with a sniper rifle, his almost too-clear knowledge of this too-wide world around them are all explained away by the fact that he was created by some of the smartest people in the Commonwealth.

It’s because of the way that all the pieces fall together when Deacon tells her he’s a synth that Clara decides she’s going to tell him the truth. Whether he believes her or not is his decision, because it’s such a wild story that Clara doesn’t think she can expect anyone to trust that she’s telling the truth. Truth and trust haven’t really seemed to be foremost on Deacon’s agenda, but it’s his call.

“I’m from b-before the w-war.” When Clara says it, she spits it out. The words are almost embarrassing; they belong in a Grognak comic, not in her real life experience. “They p-put me down in the vault, and froze m-me, and my husband, and my son.” She wants to cry. Clara can feel the tears coming, a surge of minor keys threatening to burst a dam that she didn’t know she was holding together. She tries to play a card from Deacon’s deck, and inserts what she hopes is a tone of apathy into her voice. “When w-we thawed out, Kellogg…” The word isn’t there, so instead, Clara reaches a hand to her own temple and makes a gun out of it, mock-firing to prove a point. “He got r-rid of Nate, and when I woke u-up, the world was like this.”

Deacon’s quiet for too long, and Clara’s thankful that she’s decided to walk and talk instead of standing still, because if she hadn’t been moving the silence would be unbearable. When he finally answers, he says, “Well, you don’t _have_ to believe me about being a synth, but I have to admit, I’ve certainly taught you how to lie with the best of them.”

Clara deflates. It’s better this way, she thinks, in the long run, because she no longer owes him an explanation, but if he doesn’t believe her anyway then there’s nothing Deacon can hold against her. She’s got Amelia to talk to about the time before the bombs fell even if Nate isn’t still here. It doesn’t hurt that he doesn’t believe her.

“Anyway,” Deacon says, “What else is there to say about the Cabots? A little out there, but you’ve met Carrington and survived, so I really don’t think they’re anything we can’t handle as a team, boss.”

It _doesn’t_ hurt that he doesn’t take her seriously, because Clara didn’t expect anything more from him. He doesn’t owe her anything, certainly. Clara spins the ring around her finger and chews on her lip when the thought of Nate doesn’t bring any relief.

They continue the move forward towards what Deacon melodramatically calls, “The Enigmatic Cabot House. If you imagine it all capitalized, it’s even spookier.”

Clara smiles despite herself; she likes Deacon, all things considered, even if he is a synth that lies and lies and lies and expects everyone else to do the same to him.

* * *

 

“It occurs to me that Mum is far from happy here. As her only true friend from before, I was hoping to ask you for your advice.”

Amelia doesn’t know what to make of the Mr. Handy that floats before her. He seems surprisingly self-aware for one of the Mr. Handies pre-war, but Clara had always had a kind of soft charisma that brought the best out of people. Perhaps the same could be said of Codsworth.

She ponders what he says for a moment, all of Codsworth’s eyes on her. “Perhaps,” Codsworth says after Amelia pauses for too long, “I am not asking for your advice so much as for your confirmation that the idea I have had is not one that would be insensitive to the ways Mum is trying to learn.”

Amelia walks behind Codsworth as he leads the way, ignoring the stares of the few Minutemen that still haven’t grown used to her. Sanctuary is a fine enough place to be. It’s not as fun as Goodneighbor, but she can always count on Hancock for a good time, and Amelia’s fond enough of Clara that she’ll stick around for the time being.

Codsworth chatters the whole way to Nate and Clara’s old home. It’s strange, standing here outside this ruin of a place when once Amelia had attended a couple of dinner parties there. Nate and Joey hadn’t been particularly close, but her husband had been attached to Nate after they served together, and Amelia had always thought Clara could become a good friend.

She and Clara had both been prettier then. At least Clara had beaten the radiation.

When they finally enter the doorway, Codsworth stops talking long enough for Amelia to grin widely as she realizes his plan. Amelia walks five feet forward and runs an irradiated finger over the run-down piano’s bench. It comes up covered in dirt and grime and two hundred years’ worth of grief.

She doesn’t have to think before she turns to Codsworth and asks, “What do you need me to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> clara believes in him and she really should not  
> she will learn (maybe)
> 
> thanks for reading!!!! i'm so thankful for your faithful commenting and readership xx
> 
> ps i hope you love amelia as much as i love amelia   
> amelia x codsworth the brotp


	12. it's something bigger than myself

Deacon had thought he had her, but then Atlas tells him some convoluted fib about how she’s from before the bombs fell, and Deacon can’t make a skeptical face fast enough. That’s such a rookie mistake, when lying; sure, the more outrageous the lie, the more fun it is to convince people that it’s truth, but if there’s not even a hint of authenticity in it then it’s not convincing at all. Still, Atlas hasn’t said anything about the note that is certainly _not_ a recall code, so maybe she believed him after all, though then he can’t piece together why she’d lie to him if she believed his story.

Why anyone would believe him about anything is really beyond him in the first place.

* * *

 

The paper burns a hole in her pocket so hot that it’s all Clara can do not to whip out Deacon’s note and read it whenever she’s not within his line of sight. There’s still a part of her, of course, that understands that Deacon very well may have been lying to her, but what would he gain out of a lie like that? Clara can’t wrap her mind around it, and, not a little dryly, she thinks she can’t really ever wrap her mind around Deacon himself, either.

He’s so different from her Nate, Clara thinks absently as they hike up one of the last few hills as they approach Cabot House. Deacon’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery where Nate had always been almost clumsily straightforward from the moment he stumbled towards her a little tipsy in that bar in Denmark. She also can’t quite figure out why she’s comparing them, and when Clara reaches her hand into her pocket to fiddle with Nate’s wedding band like she always does when she thinks of him, Clara finds Deacon’s recall code instead.

 _Whatever it takes to find Shaun_ , she thinks, and it plays on repeat in her head, trying not to think too hard about the fact that since she has come out of the vault Clara has murdered a man, stabbed a super mutant, and joined a vigilante freedom fighting organization.

“Here we are,” Deacon says, and Clara comes back down from the clouds as quickly as she had ascended there, “The chill-inducing creep show of the Cabot House.”

“It looks…” Clara starts then stops, fishing for the word.

It’s a testament to her budding friendship with Deacon that he tries valiantly to fill in the word for her. “Eerie? Rich? Well-ventilated?”

Clara purses her lips and rolls her eyes at him. “P-pristine.”

Deacon doesn’t take offense to her tone, instead nodding. “I know, right?”

The house stands tall, an almost looming presence, and it has been maintained in a way that Clara hasn’t seen anywhere else in the Commonwealth so far. It looks like there’s even _landscaping_ out front, and Clara can’t help the smile that blooms on her face as she kneels down in front of a shrub of pink hydrangeas. There’s a flash of Sanctuary Hills and being a housewife that she can’t push away as the scent of the flowers hits her full in the face, and Clara breathes in deeply. “ _Hvor smuk,_ ” she says, more to herself than anything.

“Hmm?” Deacon asks, glancing in her direction, and Clara stands abruptly from where she had been kneeling.

“I j-just said that the flowers are b-beautiful.”

“Nothing beautiful comes without a price,” Deacon says in a voice that sounds almost world-weary, walking towards what looks like an intercom and pressing a button on the box. “I’m looking for Edward Deegan,” Deacon says, voice dropping about half a register in an almost natural way, “It’s Jackson from Bunker Hill. You said you had work for me if I was willing to keep quiet?”

The intercom crackles to life, and a scratchy voice comes out. “Who’s the girl?”

Clara looks around suspiciously. She hasn’t seen security cameras anywhere since the bombs, but, well, this house has flowers out front. Anything is possible.

“Lucy,” Clara says when Deacon gets ready to start speaking into the box again. She tries to instill confidence in her voice that she doesn’t really feel when she says, “My name’s Lucy.”

“She’s a vault dweller I picked up in Goodneighbor. I’ve been trying to show her the ropes in exchange for currying a little favor with her vault,” Deacon says, and he nods at her just a little, almost in appreciation for how she’d thought on her feet.

“Fair enough,” says the voice, and it’s the last thing Clara hears before there’s a distinctive _click_ from behind the door.

“Between you and me, Atlas,” Deacon whispers as she brushes the dirt from kneeling in front of the flowers off her knees, “Trying on other people might help with the stutter.”

He’s trying to teach her something, Clara’s pretty confident, and Deacon tries on different lives like Amelia used to change lipsticks. If it’s worked for him this far, it might not be a bad lesson to learn, so Clara throws together the most haphazard profile she can for Lucy in the forty-five seconds it takes them to enter the Cabot residence and meet up with Deacon’s contact.

Edward Deegan is a ghoul, and he seems mostly interested in talking to Deacon. Still, he sizes Clara up as if measuring what kind of threat she could pose, and when his black eyes meet hers, Clara does her best to mimic Nate’s cocky grin from too many years ago. Deegan even smirks at her, and Clara can’t help but feel that she’s passed a test that she didn’t even know was taking place.

Lucy’s cockier than Clara, a little less naïve and a lot more reckless, and, well, that’s about as much as Clara’s got figured out. Clara puts her left hand on her hip and leans into it, making sure to have her right hand as available as possible to grab the pistol resting in a holster near it. Marcus had been a bumbling Diamond City guard, but Jackson’s an efficient mercenary, and Clara’s pretty confident that he would only take on someone who could take care of themselves.

Deegan leads them into a spacious living area with the kind of furniture that Clara might have killed for a couple hundred years ago. There’s a dark-haired man with a lab coat in the room as well, and Deegan says, “That’s Jack. Just have a word with him when you want to know specifics about the job.”

Deacon looks sideways at her, and Clara can just make out his eyes behind the sunglasses. “You wanna take the lead, boss?”

“Nah, Jackson,” Clara says, still feeling a little like Lucy, “I am but your a-apprentice.” It’s the first time Clara’s stumbled since she’s tried on Lucy, but she forgets it in almost a split-second at the sight of something across the room. She’s Clara again, and she’s never been so happy to be Clara as when she asks Jack Cabot, “Is t-that a _Steinway?_ ”

The man in the lab coat turns slowly as Clara looks at the grand piano in what can only be described as awestruck bliss. “Yes,” he says, not a little awkwardly, “It’s been in the family for years.”

The piano is black and beautiful and there is not a scratch on it, almost like the Cabots could have just brought it home. Clara feels nothing but pure wonder. “It’s a _marvel_.”

“Do you play?” Jack asks, and Clara wonders if Deacon is still on the same page as her because she is flying high at the moment.

Clara nods brightly, bun still tight to her head but trying to craft Lucy nonetheless. “We had an upright piano in the vault b-because the overseer’s husband liked to play. Their daughter and I were good f-friends, so he taught me how to play.”

Jack gives her a smile that can only be described as cautiously amused. “I must say, you’re quite different from the usual mercenaries that Edward brings home.”

Clara isn’t sure what Lucy would say, so she just gives him the most shining smile she can manage before Deacon clears his throat and says, “Lucy, we’re here to talk business.”

Clara rips her gaze away from the Steinway, but not before wondering what kind of work she would have to do before she could take it back to Sanctuary with her, and joins Deacon on the couch.

Deacon does most of the talking, and Clara’s happy just to steal glances at the piano in the corner. The fact that something that feels so much like home even still exists in this world is a marvel that Clara can’t believe she’s been allowed to see.

The job is simple enough; it’s delivery recovery, though Jack and Deegan both are skittish about what the delivery actually is, only saying that it’s _sensitive_ in nature. The delivery went missing at an asylum that the Cabots own, and the guard captain there might have more information about where it wound up. Deacon stands when they get ready to talk price, and when Deegan says that he thinks a hundred and fifty caps is a more than reasonable amount, Deacon _hmm_ s.

“How about we cut the reward by fifty caps and you let my friend here play a song when we get back?” Deacon says, and Clara’s eyes go wide like saucers.

Deegan looks to Jack, who chews a little on the inside of his lip. “I suppose Emogene never really plays anymore anyway, and it’s not worth anything these days regardless.”

Deacon smirks and takes Jack Cabot’s hand in a firm handshake that most wastelanders wouldn’t think twice about backing out on. Clara’s giddy, and when they are outside the house, the unrestrained hug that she gives Deacon could be from either Lucy or Clara, or maybe both.

That’s fifty caps that they don’t have to put towards finding Shaun, but Clara feels like that’s a miniscule loss compared to the fact that she’ll be able to have a song for however little an amount of time. She stays latched onto him a little longer than she’d planned to, and he seems a little uneasy at the contact, finally wriggling out of her almost too-thankful arms. Briefly, Clara is worried she’s crossed a line.

It doesn’t seem like he’s upset with her, though, because just as her grin fades, he gives her a soft, almost genuine smile of his own. “They don’t say _thank you_ down in the vaults?”

Her grin comes back, and Clara feels like her face might just split in two. “At home, w-we would say something like, ‘ _Tusind tak,’_ but I suppose I c-can say thank you.”

She doesn’t know why she thinks Deacon would care what they would say in Denmark, but she’s even happier when he indulges her. “What would someone ‘at home’ say back?”

Clara feels like she could fly when she says, “You would respond with, ‘ _Det var s_ _å lidt.’_ We d-don’t really have a direct translation f-for ‘you’re welcome,’ but that’s the closest.”

Deacon tries to say it, and for once, Clara doesn’t feel like she has the most ridiculous accent in the Commonwealth. Hesitantly, Clara would almost call herself happy.

“Literally, I s-said, ‘thousand thanks,’ and you said ‘it was nothing,’” Clara says, and begins striding forward towards where Jack had said the asylum was located.

Deacon shoots her a look and says, “Thousand thanks? Why not nine hundred and ninety-nine thanks? Or a thousand and one thanks? Also, it wasn’t nothing. Fifty caps is the difference between a production-quality wig and a party-store knockoff.”

* * *

 

Deacon doesn’t know for sure what the piano means to Atlas, and isn’t even sure how well she could play, but he definitely isn’t prepared for Atlas to wrap her arms around his torso while bouncing up and down like a little girl. It’s the first time she’s ever touched him of her own volition, and the first time he’s been hugged in more years than he wants to count. Deacon wouldn’t say Barbara was the last one to hug him, but he can’t name a person after her who has either.

Atlas glows all the way up to the asylum and even through shooting up the raiders that have taken the Cabots’ delivery hostage, and Deacon thinks that she has altogether too much faith in him than makes him comfortable. Still, they work too well together to back out on her, and when it dawns on Deacon that Atlas is the first authentic friend that he’s had in a very long time, he has to try very hard not to flip the stealth boy that’s nestled in the bottom of his pack.

* * *

 

“I couldn’t find any piano wire or whatever you called it, but I found something that KL-E-0 called high carbon steel,” Amelia says, and dumps a bag out on the table in Nate and Clara’s old house where Codsworth has set up shop.

“Hmm,” Codsworth says, a deceptively thoughtful noise. “I’m not sure my programming has given me the capacity for that kind of dexterity, but I guess we’ll never know unless we try!”

Amelia finds Codsworth a little over-the-top in the way she finds all Mr. Handies over-the-top, but she can’t deny it was a good idea to try to repair this piano, even if part of the appeal was selfish. Clara had played at the few dinner parties that she and Amelia had both found each other at, and it had been beautiful every time. Clara had promised Amelia tea if she could find it, but Amelia didn’t think the search particularly promising, so perhaps if the piano was in working condition she could talk Clara into a song or two from the days when Amelia’s skin was still soft.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi sorry it's been a bit!! i don't have an excuse except that i couldn't find any motivation lmao  
> wow!! the feedback on last chapter filled me with such thankfulness i literally was so worried that i wouldn't be able to put anything up that would live up to ur expectations. i really hope this is ok!!!
> 
> thanks so much for reading you guys. it means so much. xx


	13. it's not about reciprocation

The song inside Clara is vibrant and rich, and for the moment it is not just inside her. She gets to share it, this bright and magnificent thing that makes her feel as though she might burst at the seams.

Clara is hyper-aware of Deacon behind her, and Jack Cabot and Deegan are somewhere in the room as well. She doesn’t blame them; a Steinway was near priceless before the bombs dropped, and all the more so now. Her breathing feels like it’s in pieces as she positions herself on the bench, and from the moment her fingers rest on the very first keys, Clara shudders.

 _Home_.

It is with a grin that Clara can’t pretend is her impression of Lucy that she whips around and tries to make eye contact with Deacon. “Any requests, J-Jackson?”

Deacon raises one eyebrow above the rim of his sunglasses, and if Clara didn’t know him better she might even say that he looked a bit flustered. “Surprise me, Luce.”

Luce. A nickname for the alter-ego that Clara hadn’t even known she wanted. Clara, Atlas, and now Lucy.

The blush that creeps up her cheeks is natural, friendly even, and from the first chord, she can feel it resonate within her. _Home._

A kindly-startled chuckle comes from behind her, and Clara interrupts her playing when she hears it. The last thing she can afford to do is offend the host whose piano she’s playing, but Jack just says, “You’re familiar with Chopin?” It’s more of a question than a statement, made in disbelief. She makes eye contact with him and nods before returning to the piece.

It’s too much. The piece is not altogether sad, the _Fantaisie-Impromptu_ , but there’s a gut reaction to it that Clara can’t shake, and that combined with the nostalgia of the world that’s gone has Clara nearly crying by the end. The tears are in her eyes, but Lucy isn’t a woman who cries, so she manages just keeping her eyes misty instead of having the tears spill out.

Clara sits back, not a little breathless, and grins despite the sobs that are tearing at her throat, chancing a glance back at her audience before returning to staring at her fingers on the piano.

Jack clears his throat softly, but Clara doesn’t look away from the keys, a little hypnotized.

“I’ll admit,” Jack says, “I was surprised that you knew a Steinway when you saw it, and I still had my doubts about your actual skill then. You’re a pleasant departure from the mercenaries Edward usually digs up for us.”

Clara is glowing and out of her own head with joy, and Deacon rests a hand on her shoulder and squeezes in a way that almost feels affectionate, though she isn’t sure if it’s him or Jackson.

“Are you familiar with Mozart’s Sonata in D Major?” Jack asks, and Clara flips through the catalog of her mind.

“The duet?” Clara was familiar with Mozart once, and even though she was rusty at best, she felt relatively confident. “I’m v-versed enough.”

Jack motions for her to scoot to the side, and Clara obliges; it’s his instrument, after all. “Two, three, four,” he counts off, and begins. Clara’s fingers find their keys easily and, God, but if this wasteland hasn’t started to feel like home.

* * *

 

Deacon’s not sure what he expected, but the first song itself is rattling enough. Sure, he knows what a piano is. He’s well-read, especially for this wasteland. Deacon even knows what a piano sounds like, though it’s mostly from that loop of fifteen songs that Travis plays on Diamond City Radio and the occasional stop to listen to Magnolia in the Third Rail.

Deacon’s not sure what he expected, but he definitely didn’t think Atlas was capable of producing the magic that fills the air around them the second her fingers hit the keys..

She flutters along the keys, belonging there more than Deacon’s ever seen her look like she’s belonged anywhere. To make matters even more complicated, after a flourish of a finish, Atlas whips around just briefly, like she’s looking for validation before returning to the set of keys before her.

 _Hell._ Jackson ( _not_ Deacon, mind you) places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes softly (and there’s so much _bone_ there, didn’t they feed her in her vault? Damn.), just enough so that Lucy knows that Jackson’s still there.

It wouldn’t be hard to disappear, Deacon muses, even at this very second in time. Atlas is so absorbed in what’s happening immediately in front of her that he could split and she wouldn’t even notice; she’s higher than any chem could ever take her.

Deacon plays the idea over and over in his head as she practically bounces next to Jack Cabot, who has taken a seat next to her. She’s chattering about Mozart, more words strung together one after another than Deacon thinks he’s ever heard Atlas say without stuttering.

What does she really know about him, anyway? He’s devastatingly handsome, quick with a phrase, and loyal to the Railroad. That’s all Atlas can know with certainty, and Deacon’s fed her enough lies that she might not even know those for sure. Well, except the handsome part, but no one could miss that. Besides, once she pieces together that Deacon’s not really a synth, she might very well be halfway to Splitsville before Deacon can blink.

Atlas smiles radiantly at Jack Cabot, almost seductively, and Deacon reconsiders. She was pretty quick with that line about being frozen and being from before the war. A story that’s that fantastical requires a pretty sharp mind, and a resilient one, too. Maybe he and Atlas are peas in a pod, the partner that Deacon never knew he needed. Together, two liars can almost make an honest person in this Commonwealth.

Deacon thinks so hard that he misses Atlas negotiating the terms of another job, coming in just on the end as Jack Cabot says, “I’m a fair enough partner, but Emogene is the true pianist in the family. If you and your partner could bring her back, it would set my poor mother’s mind at ease and perhaps the two of you could even grace us with a performance, if she’s willing.”

Atlas looks back at Deacon like he’s in charge, like she doesn’t have Jack Cabot wrapped around her finger. “What do you say, Jackson?”

“Long as they’ve got the caps, I’ve got the time,” Deacon says in a disaffected drawl. It’s not time to bug out. Not yet.

* * *

 

Jack tells them that Emogene ran off with some boyfriend, but Deacon suggests stopping back at HQ for supplies. Clara jumps at the idea.

“We can at least sleep on a m-mattress for a night, then,” she says, and she bites her lip hopefully. Deacon hates being at HQ for more than a couple of hours, but maybe he’ll throw her a bone.

Instead, he says, “What, sharing body heat with me under the light of the Commonwealth moon wasn’t romantic enough for you?”

Maybe it’s the Lucy inside of her, but Clara smiles despite the blush creeping up her neck. “Girl like me deserves at least the d-dingiest mattress at headquarters.”

Deacon barks out a laugh, and slings an arm around Clara’s shoulders. She shudders involuntarily but doesn’t shirk away from it; it’d feel hypocritical after the full-body hug Clara had given Deacon only days before. If she’s being honest, the contact feels even comforting. It wouldn’t be betrayal even if Nate were still alive. Deacon is Clara’s partner, and Nate’s dead anyway, so it’s all a moot point.

Deacon’s not Jackson anymore, and his motor mouth is going full-force, providing plenty of distraction from the angst that comes with being so sudden of a widow. It doesn’t really matter that he’s a synth. At this point, Deacon’s the best friend she’s got.

Their return to HQ is without fanfare, but it’s only because everyone else is so entrenched in their own projects. Desdemona and Dr. Carrington are absorbed in something P.A.M. is telling them, Tinker Tom is fiddling with a scope that’s almost half the size of the rifle that it’s attached to, and Glory’s peeling off a bandage that looks like it’s been wrapped around her calf a few too many times. Only Drummer notices them painting a subtle picture, walking down the stairs.

“Deacon, Atlas,” Drummer says, “Randolph Safehouse left a drop for you. If you have the time, they could really use some backup.”

Deacon groans dramatically, but Clara nods. “You g-got it.”

Deacon flits in and out, suave as ever with everyone he speaks to, skillfully avoiding Carrington in the process. Clara takes a seat awkwardly, sitting alone by the armor repair and modification bench until Glory swaggers her way over with the kind of atmosphere only she can evoke.

“Did Dee drive you up the wall yet?” she asks, and it strikes Clara that Glory is incredibly attractive in a rebellious, vigilante, rough around the edges way. “I run with him for about fifteen minutes and I’ve filled my yearly quota.”

Chuckling, Clara shakes her head. “We actually make a p-pretty decent team, I think.”

“Huh,” Glory says, mostly to herself before leaning back and lighting the cigarette she had been fiddling with. “He’s been such a loner since I’ve known him. Guess it just took the right partner.”

“How long have you known h-him?” Clara asks, because she can do polite conversation even when she can’t do anything else. That’s the best thing she learned upon arrival to America, all those years ago.

“Deacon?” Glory confirms in between drags, “I don’t know. Years. Since Desdemona groomed me into the ass-kicker I am today.”

“Oh,” Clara says, disappointed and unsure why, “I thought maybe y-you two might have known each o-other from the Institute.”

Glory shakes her head, wary, before understanding comes creeping in. “Did he really feed you that bullshit?” She sighs, and runs a hand through the hair on the side of her head that isn’t shaved. “Deacon’s not a fucking synth. Wish he’d quit telling people he was. Means people are all the less likely to believe me when I tell them I’m one.”

There’s a shattering sound that Clara hears somewhere in her head, a smattering of chords that she can’t reconcile, and the flood of emotions comes all at once.

_Why would he lie?_

_What does he gain?_

_Why would you **believe** him, you gullible fool?_

Clara doesn’t realize she’s shaking until Glory’s looking at her with concerned eyes, the perfect picture of a concerned friend wrapped up in an ass-kicking body. “Atlas? Hey. Don’t take it personally. It’s just who he is.”

When Clara doesn’t answer, Glory eventually excuses herself. It’s hard to blame her when Clara isn’t sure that she has the words in either Danish or English, and when no one is looking, Clara reaches into her pocket. The note Deacon gave her rubs treacherously against Nate’s wedding band, and Clara bites her lip hard before succumbing to the temptation to read it.

There is a sliver of hope in her still while Clara unfolds the note; maybe there’ll be a recall code on it after all, and at the end of the day she’ll just be a shitty friend instead of the idiot who let the pathological liar get inside her head and _play her_.

The music in her head screams angrily, and the note falls to the floor from Clara’s limp hands.

_You can’t trust everyone._

* * *

 

When they leave the next morning, Deacon’s his usual self, like he hasn’t even noticed that Clara’s been giving him the silent treatment from almost the minute they returned to HQ. They’re off to find Emogene, who’s holed up somewhere if Clara has made any sense of the information the Cabots gave her.

So they walk. And they walk. And they walk a little more. And finally, Deacon says, “What, you forget all that English that had been coming along so nicely?”

Clara stays stone cold, and when it becomes clear that she’s not going to take the bait, Deacon tries again with, “Oh man. You read my recall code, didn’t you?”

Her eyes narrow. They are walking side by side, but Clara stops and stares at him until Deacon mirrors her. “I didn’t read a-anything until Glory ratted you o-out.”

Clara hates her accent, the way that the words get thicker in her mouth when there’s rage that’s tearing apart her insides trying to get out. It’s a crescendo that doesn’t seem like it will ever become a diminuendo, and the worst part is that Clara knows that in this world Deacon has done nothing wrong.

“Why.” Clara says it as a statement and not a question. “Why lie to me?”

She wills her voice not to break or falter, forces the stutter as far away as she can from this conversation.

“Look,” Deacon says, not sounding the least bit apologetic, “First of all, don’t take it personally. I lie to everybody.”

Clara purses her lips and looks determinedly at the ground; _I thought we were friends_ plays on repeat in her head, a chorus that seems like it could taunt her for years.

“Second of all,” Deacon continues, “I’m supposed to be showing you the ropes of the Railroad, right? Well, consider this lesson number – well, whatever we’re on now. No matter how much you trust someone, there’s no way to know for sure if they’re actually an Institute spy sent to infiltrate us. Maybe I’m just another guy with family back home he’s trying to protect; maybe not. You can’t trust everyone.”

“No wonder you d-didn’t believe me when I told you my story,” Clara says, even managing to force a huffed laugh out in the process despite her stutter creeping back in. “Why would y-you believe me about hearing the world f-fall apart around me and w-waking up to a place where the i-insects are a hundred times bigger than they’re s-supposed to be, and where p-people are crueler than ever, and where even the person you think is y-your best friend would rather write what you say off as a l-lie instead of trust her in r-return?”

Deacon doesn’t so much blink at her announcement that she has been telling the truth all of this time; maybe he thinks that she’s trying to one-up her. Clara doesn’t really care, and if she sets her jaw tight enough she can almost feel the tears in her eyes recede.

“It’s my fault for thinking the w-world was like it used to be,” Clara says softly, “I never really had many friends, and the ones I had I thought the world of. It’s not f-fair to expect things like that of you when Massachusetts looks like _this_.” Clara gestures vaguely at the landscape around them, and sighs. “Let’s find Emogene.”

She has no right to be upset. Deacon owes her nothing. Somehow, that makes it hurt even more, and her biggest fear is that he’ll disappear right then and there.

* * *

 

Atlas appears to think that his special brand of deception is a post-war phenomenon, and she’s far too invested in her impassioned tirade for Deacon to interrupt her. It’s not the time to talk about his trust issues, and ironic though it sounds, he doesn’t trust her enough for that. That’s the crux of all of this anyway. It’s best not to trust anyone.

She starts walking again, slowly, like she doesn’t think Deacon is going to follow her, which is ridiculous. Deacon had told Atlas the lie _because_ he was fond of her in a certain way. Atlas might not understand, but Deacon wouldn’t be wasting his breath trying to teach lessons to someone who he didn’t care if they lived or die.

Maybe they are friends, or something. Definitely something.

Deacon falls into step beside her, and Atlas exhales, almost imperceptibly, but Deacon’s been people-watching a long time.

“How do you say ‘sorry’ in that language you’re always speaking?”

Atlas looks at him through her eyelashes, and something vaguely close to emotional stirs within him. It quashes itself nearly as quickly as it rears its ugly head.

“To say sorry? _Undskyld._ ”

“Oh? Well, I’m not going to say it, but it’s a good word to know,” Deacon says, and Atlas chuckles, and he knows that they’re okay. Maybe he should’ve bugged out back at the Cabot House, because they aren’t two liars after all. He’s a liar, and she’s just a damned good person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well i mean like  
> i didn't make you wait a _whole_ month lol  
>  kisses all


	14. feet cast in solid stone

Deacon still doesn’t know if he believes her, but he’s inclined to. If Atlas had that strong of a reaction to his harmless little synth stunt, then it’d be out of character for her to lie in response. What’s that mean, though? She’s literally a couple centuries old, which means at least he’s no longer the oldest person in the Railroad.

The more Deacon thinks about it, though, the more sense that it all makes. Atlas still knocks on doors, shakes hands, and Deacon thinks back to when he saw her mutilate that super mutant at Faneuil Hall with Dogmeat. She was softer then, but she’s still what he’d call soft now. Picking her steps carefully, Atlas still lets Deacon have her back towards him, so there is still a semblance of friendship between them. Deacon doesn’t think he’d let her have _his_ back, of course, but that’s a deep-rooted psychological issue that’s been around much longer than Atlas has been unfrozen.

“J-Jack said that Emogene spends a lot of time at the Third Rail, r-right?” Atlas asks, and Deacon snaps to attention. It’s been quiet between them for a little longer than usual, though that’s no fault of Atlas’s; Deacon normally does about three-quarters of the talking for the both of them, and he’s been in his own head anyway. “That’s that dive bar in G-Goodneighbor, I think.”

Deacon nods, and wonders if he’s imagining Atlas’s stutter coming back in full force. “Yeah. Charlie’s not exactly a happy-go-lucky guy, but if something happens down there, he knows about it.”

Atlas nods, and Deacon steps up next to her, lengthening his strides until they are walking side by side.

* * *

 

Deacon takes her confession too well, and Clara is pretty sure he doesn’t believe her. She wouldn’t expect him to after all this, and isn’t even sure why she trusted him in the first place, even now, hours after the whole debacle. Resolving to get the strongest drink the Third Rail can offer as soon as appropriate, she hears Deacon move beside her, and they walk.

All this walking has gotten to her. Clara’s thighs, calves, and quads are all thicker, and she’s thankful for the boots she filched out of the vault on her way out. The goal stays the same, she sings to herself inside her head, trying not to mourn that the words are English and not Danish. The Railroad’s a means to an end, and she and Deacon can be friends, but he’s a resource first. Shaun is still the priority, sturdy thighs be damned.

Shaun is the priority, no matter how running around this Commonwealth somehow feels natural in a way that having tea with Amelia in Sanctuary Hills never did. It doesn’t matter that having Deacon at her side feels right, organic in a way that Nate never did even when they were at their happiest right after leaving Europe.

“We’re looking for a woman called Emogene Cabot,” Deacon says, sliding smoothly onto the bar, and Clara swears that if Whitechapel Charlie had eyebrows that they’d have taken flight.

“Remove your arms from my freshly cleaned countertops before I remove them from your body,” Charlie says, and Clara chuckles without missing a beat. “Name rings a bell, but I haven’t seen her in quite a while. Check with Magnolia; she likes to make friends.”

Magnolia’s beautiful, in that trashy, too-tired way that Clara’s always been somewhat enamored of. Deacon seems immune to her charms, but it’s too easy for Clara to get lost in Magnolia’s sultry voice, not to mention the plunging neckline. When she stops singing, Clara bites her lip in wonder.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like the song, dollface?” Magnolia asks, and she looks straight past Deacon to zero in on Clara, who is now chewing on the inside of her mouth.

The blush creeps up Clara’s neck, and Deacon’s wolfish grin lets Clara know that he’s definitely seen it.

_What would Lucy say?_

“I’d like any s-song you’re singing,” Clara says, and she hopes there’s about three times more confidence in her words than she feels.

Magnolia claps her hands together giddily, smiling widely and laughing. “Well, look at how sweet you are. Haven’t lost all your vault sensibilities yet for standard wasteland manners.”

Deacon poorly disguises a chuckle in a cough, and Clara tries on a smile that’s as close to sensual as she can manage. Nate would be mortified, but she pushes the thought to the back of her mind, because Lucy’s wild and free and she wouldn’t give a damn what any man thinks about who she chooses to flirt with. She doesn’t have to keep secrets anymore. Deacon’s got plenty enough for the both of them, and Clara being a couple centuries old seems to make everything else inconsequential.

“Charlie said you know Emogene Cabot. H-have you seen her?”

“Emogene? Yeah. I know her. I haven’t seen her in a while though.”

Clara tries to suppress the disappointed sigh. “She’s missing, and her family’s worried about her.”

Magnolia looks genuinely concerned, and tilts her head to the side, taking another step away from the microphone. “Well, I’m glad someone’s looking after her.”

“Do you have any i-idea where she’s gone?” Clara asks, trying not to sound desperate and really trying not to think about the parallels and the general hopelessness she feels when she realizes how far away Shaun is.”

Magnolia purses her lips and thinks while Deacon fiddles absently with the fraying hem of his shirt. Clara doesn’t break eye contact with Magnolia, because Lucy’s bold and knows what she wants even when Clara doesn’t. “There was a preacher fellow. One of the slick ones, going on about remaking your life and all that jazz. Most of the people around here wouldn’t even consider giving him the time of day, but Emogene? She ate it all up. It didn’t hurt that he was good-looking. You might even call him intense. Some women find that...” Magnolia pauses, and Clara feels like she might be very close to walking into the mouth of a predator. “Irresistible.”

Clara’s all too aware of her gangly limbs and dirty hair pulled back in a bun so tight that the strands are breaking off as Magnolia gives her the once-over for roughly the fifth time. Deacon’s third-wheeling hard even if he doesn’t know it (and Clara’s sure he does), but she’s going to do this on her own if it kills her. She likes the liar being around, but Clara needs to prove that she doesn’t _need_ him.

“Ham? Ham!” Magnolia gestures over Clara and Deacon’s heads from where she’s standing on the stage.

“Everything alright, Miss Magnolia?” The raspy voice comes from the bouncer that Clara and Deacon brushed by on the way into the bar, and he comes down the broken escalator towards the three of them.

“Of course. This lovely lady’s just looking for Emogene. Do you remember where that preacher came from?”

“Brother Thomas?” There’s a contrast to Ham’s suit and deteriorating skin condition that is almost nauseating, and Clara tries to squelch the feeling before it crystallizes, because Ham can’t help being a ghoul any more than Deacon can help being a liar at his core. “Had to throw him out. Kept bothering customers with that salvation racket. Still got a flier, if you want it.”

He offers it to Deacon, and Deacon takes it, nodding his thanks.

“Thanks, honey,” Magnolia says, all sugar, “You were a big help.”

Ham walks away, and Magnolia continues. “I hope Emogene’s alright. Didn’t much like the idea of her running off with that preacher guy.” She sighs, the sequins of her dress glinting off her cleavage. “Good luck finding her, dollface. And make sure you stop by next time I’m off-duty.” Magnolia winks, and Clara smirks her best Lucy smirk back at her before leading Deacon back up the stairs and into the sunshine.

* * *

 

One of the best things about working with Atlas is that there are never any questions and explanations unless one party gives freely. That’s the worst thing about Carrington; the asshole acts like he’s entitled to answers, as if Deacon doesn’t carefully calculate what to tell each person he comes across.

Still, Atlas is getting pretty good at putting Lucy on, and Deacon doesn’t know what’s real and not real. That’s the sign of a great disguise, of course, but it’s a little disconcerting to watch it play out in front of him without being the one who plays it out.

“Didn’t know you played for the other team,” Deacon says, watching Atlas struggle with the fire in the cave they’ve found on their way to sniff out Brother Thomas and what appears to be his cult. Atlas looks up at him from where she’s hunched over kindling, and briefly Deacon wonders if she’ll be able to start it without his help.

“T-team?” Atlas asks, in that stutter that reminds him that she’s operating at a disadvantage always, even when she seems to have adjusted with the best of wastelanders.

“Yeah, the other team,” Deacon repeats himself. Atlas rolls her eyes, a feistiness that he gets to know better with every day.

“I don’t know what y-you mean.” The turn of phrase isn’t registering as smoothly as he had hoped it would, so he has to try again.

“What with your husband, I didn’t think you’d be into Magnolia.”

Atlas doesn’t grimace or stiffen at the mention of her husband, but her fingers clench the stick in her hand all the tighter. Deacon doesn’t really expect an answer, but she gives him one that’s pointed in all the sharp ways. “Who says I have to pick a team?”

Deacon throws his hands up in mock-surrender as Atlas fiddles with the beginnings of a fire all the harder, and opts for silence for once. When flames start licking kindling, Atlas gives the fire a satisfied smile and sits down next to it before saying, “Nate didn’t like to t-talk about it, so it was always kind of… the w-world’s worst kept secret.” Atlas’s eyes glaze over like she’s far away from him again, but she doesn’t stop speaking. “Didn’t m-matter who Nate was. I would have loved him r-regardless.”

There’s radstag meat in Atlas’s pack, and when she pulls it out, Deacon watches the blood pool around her fingers while she skewers it as best she can before putting it over the fire.

“So, objectively then,” Deacon says, sitting down next to her next to the now-crackling flames, “Who is the best looking person in the Railroad? Asking for a friend.”

Clara’s laugh jingles in the air, a merry sound that almost makes Deacon regret all those years without a partner. “Well…” she says, and pauses dramatically, “Carrington looks like he’d b-be fit to play doctor.”

Deacon groans, loudly, and the laugh she gives him is so worth it before she continues. “It’s between y-you and Glory. Glory looks like s-she knows how to treat me right, but you’re w-well-aged and mysterious.”

* * *

 

Where’s the guilt? Where’s the intrusive _what would Nate think if he saw you like this what about Shaun what about the fact that he’s probably almost twice your age if you don’t count the time frozen how can you even **think** about what his eyes might look like underneath the sunglasses when someone murdered your husband?_

He’s not a synth, but Clara doesn’t think she’d care if he was. Light glints off the aviators that she’s never seen him without, and his laugh is a rumble. There’s a spark in her heart, a major chord that feels like a betrayal, and Deacon says, “Well-aged? That’s fine praise, coming from the two centuries old woman.”

“How old are you a-anyway?” Clara asks, and she wouldn’t, except he started with the questions. She doesn’t expect a serious answer, and she doesn’t get one.

“Not a day over eight hundred and seventy-five.”

Clara rolls her eyes, and punches his shoulder softly. If it had been Nate, he would have leaned in and tickled her until she couldn’t breathe, but Deacon just laughs, softly, like he doesn’t know what to do when enjoying himself.

He’s playing with her, of course, but Clara will be genuine anyway. “I turned twenty-three the day b-before the bombs fell.”

They sit in silence, and Clara roasts the radstag for a few minutes before asking if Deacon can take over. The radstag had been hurt; there was a yao guai corpse right next to where they’d found it, and Clara saw it as a mercy killing more than anything. The radstag had killed it, but broke two legs in the process, and, well, there wasn’t a point in turning down free food.

She stands, stretching, and wonders how old Deacon really is. Late thirties at least, and probably early forties, but Clara’s never been good at placing ages.

“Don’t ever tell Glory if you think she’s attractive, by the way,” Deacon says, lazily, even though Clara knows that everything that comes out of his mouth is calculated. “She’ll get a big head. Nothing worse than Glory with an ego.”

“What, so you just l-live your whole life monopolizing that knowledge that I think _you’re_ attractive?”

The words are out of her mouth before Clara can stop them, and fire consumes her body, starting from her core and working outwards.

_Where_ did that even _come from?_

But the guilt’s still not there. She’s embarrassed it slipped out, but where’s the apparition of Nate to scold her, to tell her she doesn’t deserve anything ever again?

There’s nothing.

Clara’s petrified of looking at Deacon, but it’s like he knows the second that she turns to glance at him, because he meets her gaze immediately. With a smirk, he says, “You said it, not me, boss.”

She doesn’t know where the courage is going to come from to retake her seat by the fire, but Deacon pats the ground next to him, and Clara doesn’t have a choice but to oblige. Deacon removes the now-cooked radstag from the makeshift skewer and offers her half before leaning back casually, like Clara isn’t combusting a little each moment.

“Besides, I’m good at keeping secrets,” he says without looking at her, and takes a bite of the meat without looking like anything could ever faze him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meepmeep  
> hi  
> i love you please follow me on [tumblr](www.battlemastershepard.tumblr.com)


	15. take it easy

Amelia’s glad that her skin is thicker than it used to be. This makeshift piano wire that they’re trying to figure out would’ve torn her smoothskin fingers to shreds, stretching it and pulling it taut in all the ways that Codsworth thinks is right.

They’re nicer here in Sanctuary Hills than she’d thought they would be, and the only way she’s treated differently is that a couple of those Minutemen side-eye her in a way that Amelia doesn’t like. Part of that, she supposes, is because Hancock makes a significantly larger target for anti-ghoul sentiment than she does. Amelia could be stripped naked 98% of the time and Hancock would still find a way to outdo her. It’s nice to have him there, too. Hancock’s a comrade in arms, of sorts, someone who knows the grotesque details of ghouliness like only a ghoul can.

That’s beside the point, though, Amelia thinks, and takes a step back from her handiwork. Codsworth blathers on cheerfully, and in all the days that she and the Mr. Handy have been working together, Amelia’s gotten quite skilled and decidedly not listening to him.

“A few more touches here, a tweak to this…” Codsworth says, and Amelia crosses her arms, waiting to be directed to the next intricacy of the task at hand.

If Clara didn’t fall at their feet when she saw all the work that Amelia and Codsworth had done with this godforsaken piano, Amelia had decided she was returning to Goodneighbor immediately. Still Amelia can’t stop the smile that spreads across her face when she thinks about how happy Clara will be.

“Done,” Codsworth says, self-satisfied, and Amelia raises the devastated skin where her eyebrows used to be. “Mum will be _so_ excited when she finally comes home! She always talked about how she looked forward to playing lullabies for Shaun.”

Amelia looks at the piano and smiles. It’s not perfect, but she presses her index finger where she thinks middle C is, and the note rings out, not quite true. No, it’s not quite perfect, but nothing in this wasteland is, and it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.

* * *

 

_Nate isn’t in her dreams, haunting, and normally when he isn’t there, Clara isn’t dreaming at all. She doesn’t know that it’s a dream until she wakes up, of course, but she’s dreaming. His presence has been pervasive, all-consuming, and unavoidable, and Clara hasn’t realized it until he’s not there anymore. Amelia’s there, somehow in between ghoul and smoothskin, her complexion flawless until Clara’s eyes reach her lips. The lipliner’s applied, but Amelia has no lips, and she’s monstrosity all wrapped up in a friendly package. Amelia smiles at Clara, and Clara feels like she should be threatened when Amelia bares her teeth in a grin, but a sense of welcome is all that’s there instead._

_Shaun’s in Amelia’s arms, and Clara feels like any baby should be terrified of the lipless (if benevolent) smile Amelia showers down on him, but Shaun just laughs and giggles and gurgles. Clara steps forward, a soft smile on her lips, and meets resistance immediately. Timidly, Clara reaches out a hand, and there’s something like glass there._

_She doesn’t actually expect resistance, and when Clara finds it there, she pulls her hand back in disbelief before beating on the barrier once, then twice, until she’s pounded on the barrier so many times that she can’t even count them anymore._

_“We’ll get him back, Clara,” a voice whispers in Clara’s head, and it’s Deacon’s, but Deacon hasn’t called her by her real name since she’s put on Atlas. There’s a tap on Clara’s shoulder, and Clara doesn’t realize her cheeks are wet until she whips around towards the touch and feels the coolness on her skin._

_There’s no one standing there, but a voice that is Deacon and Nate’s all at once sings, “Don’t worry. We’ll get him back.”_

When Clara wakes, the tears aren’t just a phenomenon in the dream. She tastes salt in her mouth, and it rouses her immediately, eyes flitting around, hoping beyond all hope that Deacon hasn’t seen her in a very pre-war moment of weakness. Clara sits up from her makeshift bedroll and locates Deacon, sitting with his back to the wall of the little overhang that they made into a shelter the night before. His sniper rifle’s resting in his lap, and Deacon’s fingers are absently running over the barrel, almost tenderly.

He hasn’t acted any different since she slipped and called him attractive. Why would he? They’re both adults, even in this world where up is down and Clara thinks people are just as likely to shoot as they are to handshake. It’s juvenile, thinking that the relationship they have would change just because Clara admitted that he was attractive in the same rugged, radioactive way that this whole wasteland is.

Clara’s hands wander up to her hair, pulling it out of the bun she slept in to rearrange it, tighten it, clean it up. Her fingers fall flat on the band she uses to keep it all together, Clara’s mind taken over by a nearly intrusive thought.

She wants Shaun back, but she doesn’t want to go home. If Nate weren’t dead and Shaun weren’t missing, there’d be no tragedy to the Commonwealth for her, bloody though it’s been. Still, how would Nate have lasted here, with his rigid rules and his black and white sense of justice?

Who would’ve thought the lawyer would have survived when her soldier husband didn’t?

And when she thinks it she has to hold back tears, but Clara isn’t even sure Nate would love the Clara she’s become here, toughened by scorched earth and near-death experiences with deathclaws. Would he accept this version of her, makeup-less, ratty, and what the other military housewives would decidedly call improper?

Would he have been nearly as forgiving and understanding as Deacon has been, watching her adjust to this foreign and brave new world? Deacon, who didn’t bat an eye when he found out that Clara had never met a gender she didn’t like? Deacon, who made her laugh when she was washing radroach guts out of her hair?

“You ready, boss?” Deacon asks, and Clara’s hands finish what they’re doing behind her head, but the end result isn’t the same. Her dirty hair falls flat on her back in a loose ponytail, and Clara feels a headache that she didn’t even know she had ease. The strands of hair don’t pull back the skin near her hairline, and she smiles at Deacon, wide and free.

“Let’s go, partner,” Clara says, and she still feels like herself, just a new and better version.

* * *

 

The strict hairstyle is gone, replaced with a ponytail that’s bumpy in places and doesn’t sit tight against the nape of her neck in the way that Atlas’s bun had. The scar on her neck is less visible now, concealed by where the tip of her hair sometimes gets stuck under the neck of her vault suit, but the smile that Atlas gives Deacon is real.

She looks almost happy, or like she could be happy if they had already found her son. Atlas looks like she might almost be happy travelling the Commonwealth with _him_ , of all people, with a liar, a con man, a fraud. Deacon’s sure that’s just a trick of the light. Someone who isn’t speaking their first language, slipping and calling him attractive? Sure, he’s going to poke fun about it for a while, but Deacon thinks taking it at face value is dangerous when half the time Atlas can’t even find the right word in English at all.

Still, Atlas looks good. Her hair is still pulled back, but she looks freer, less rigid, like maybe the Commonwealth hasn’t chewed her up and spit her out after all.

“Let’s find Emogene,” Atlas says, holstering her pistol on her right leg, and looking to Deacon expectantly.

“If this place is as cult-y as Ham and Magnolia made it sound,” Deacon says, picking his steps carefully among the rocks just outside their temporary shelter, “We may have to do a little Railroad-undercover work.”

Atlas arches an eyebrow that seems a little too sculpted, considering how long they’ve been out in this place together, and Deacon knows he’s got a willing partner for a little fun.

“What did you have in mind?” Atlas asks, and Deacon can’t stop his smirk, because it looks like her stutter’s disappeared and he’s got a partner who enjoys his company and is willing to play along with the scheme he’s about to hatch.

“Well,” Deacon says, and he slides into character as easily as oil separating from water, modulating his voice just slightly. “My name’s Griffin, Brother Thomas, and my girlfriend and I are looking for an escape from all the impropriety of the Commonwealth.”

Atlas’s cheeks redden, but she plays along as quickly as he expects her to. “Cecilia, Brother Thomas, my name’s Cecilia. Griffin and I are so thankful for this opportunity to become part of this family.”

Despite Atlas’s slightly more introverted personality, she’s always game for whatever Deacon throws at her. Today is no different. Atlas flutters her eyelashes at Deacon unabashedly, and then she says, “That s-something like you had in mind?”

The accent hasn’t been completely swallowed, but it’s as near to nullified as Deacon’s heard it in the weeks they’ve been together. Deacon ignores the tingling he gets when her eyes look up and through his sunglasses, almost like she can see his own, and nods, cocky smirk firmly in place. “Why, Cecilia,” Deacon says, draping an arm around Atlas’s shoulder, “You’re just my kind of girl.”

Somewhere along the way to the Amphitheater, this becomes less a mission and more a game, seeing who can take the character furthest, to the least believable but still plausible at the same time. Atlas has been taking cues from him well, or perhaps she had hidden depths that Deacon wasn’t aware of. She slides into Cecilia’s skin like it’s second nature, stuttering so little that the only way anyone would know she’s not native to the Commonwealth is the accent she still wears.

Deacon doesn’t think he’d want her to lose the accent anyway. It’s something pretty close to endearing.

* * *

 

Realizing that she’s comfortable in the Commonwealth is bittersweet, but freeing, and she’s trying to take Nate’s dream lecture about not feeling guilty to heart. Falling in step with Deacon feels natural, like even though they’re playing characters, Clara doesn’t really have to pretend. The characters are facets of her personality pulled to the front, and Cecilia’s really just a lot like the flirty girl she was back when the boys she dated could speak Danish.

It’s almost easy to forget about Shaun for a minute, doing this, enjoying herself, Deacon taking her arm in his as they approach the Amphitheater where the Pillars of the Community are holed up. _This is **for** Shaun_ , Clara tells herself, and shoves the thought away, trying not to dwell on the electricity that she feels when she can feel the strength of Deacon’s arm through the fabric of her vault suit. Clara expects Nate’s specter to appear behind her at any moment, to will guilt and heartache into her soul, but he never arrives.

This should feel like a betrayal, but playing Cecilia feels an awful lot like playing herself, without a shred of the self-loathing she’s been trying to deny ever since she woke up.

He’s good-looking for an older man, Deacon is, really. He doesn’t stand out in a crowd or anything; his role in the Railroad would be impossible if he did. Still, his biceps are pronounced and the wrinkles that line the corners of his mouth when she tugs a genuine smile from him always make her smile in return. Nate was a little more than half of what she imagines Deacon’s age to be, but she can’t shake comparing them.

Nate fades a little more every day, no matter how she tries to remember him, but Deacon is there every morning when she wakes up. Liar though he is, he hasn’t left her behind yet.

Brother Thomas and two other men stand center-stage as Deacon and Clara approach, still arm-in-arm. “Welcome, brother and sister!” Thomas exclaims upon their arrival, and Clara looks down demurely even as Deacon begins to speak.

It’s hard to reconcile this play-act with reality when every passing moment makes forgetting Nate easier.

“I’d heard tell of a place like this, where people could make new lives for themselves in the ‘Wealth if they wanted,” Deacon says, all subtle bravado. Clara nods, and Deacon smiles benevolently at her. This is a con if ever she’s seen one, all fanfare with no result, like a lot of courtrooms she’d had the pleasure of sitting in on during graduate school. Playing Deacon’s girlfriend is giving her butterflies that she doesn’t want to admit, though, and Clara dismisses it as a side-effect of this game that they’re playing, the fear of getting caught out and exposed.

It’s a game, Clara thinks, and maybe that’s why it’s all too easy to look at Deacon with soft eyes through thick eyelashes. If she pretends hard enough, the smile he gives her in response almost seems real. Clara catches a flash of Deacon’s white teeth in his smirk, and before she can think about _what would Cecilia do_ she rises up on the balls of her feet and lets her lips brush the scruff of his stubble, and there’s a swelling of song that has blood rushing to all her extremities.

Clara would give just about anything to really rattle Deacon, but all things considered, he keeps his cool so well that Clara almost feels embarrassed. In fact, if it weren’t for the tightening of the crook of his elbow, she would almost say that Deacon didn’t even notice.

Clara stifles a chuckle, suddenly realizing the satisfaction that Deacon must feel every time the blush creeps up her cheeks, no matter how brief the sensation.

“The name’s Griffin,” Deacon says, letting go of Clara’s arm long enough to shake Brother Thomas’s hand, “This is my sweet Cecilia.”

The redness that swells on her face is real; he’s calling Cecilia sweet, but Cecilia and Clara aren’t really that far apart anyway, and she’s not good at compartmentalizing. Lucy and Cecilia are parts of her blown up, exaggerated. Any compliment for Clara’s characters is just a compliment for a part of Clara that maybe Deacon hasn’t met yet.

“Pleasure to meet you, Brother Thomas. We’ve heard s-so much about you from Emogene,” Clara says, fading into Deacon’s side, trying to ignore the warmth that blooms within her. _This is Cecilia’s relationship, not yours,_ Clara thinks, but when Deacon smiles down at her, she’s something awfully close to starstruck.

The realization hits her about as hard as the bomb that hit all of Massachusetts.

He’s not everything Nate was, but it doesn’t matter.

She likes him.

Clara can’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but she’s pretty sure Deacon looks down at her when he smiles, and maybe she’s hallucinating it, but it almost seems like he cares.

* * *

 

They’re playing characters, he reminds himself. She’s got problems, he reminds himself, and even if she didn’t have a couple centuries worth of baggage, there’s no way Atlas would want him anyway.

He’s old, and broken, and too goddamn cynical to deserve anything at all. Deacon’ll settle for helping her find her son. That’ll have to be enough.

Cecilia looks adoringly up at Griffin, vault suit clinging to her tightly. She’s somehow filled out since crawling out of the vault, like being in the Commonwealth has actually been _good_ to her. If Atlas is anything, she’s resilient, and Deacon’s not sure why he’s blurring the lines between character and code name but it’s hard to think straight when she looks up at him with her big doe eyes.

If he weren’t so undeserving, he could almost run his fingers through Atlas’s ponytail, pretend that she’s Cecilia and he’s Griffin.

Deacon’s not let go of her arm since they’ve been in view of the Amphitheater. She’s sort of beautiful, in a way, despite her absurd snoring and her too long for practical hair and the way sometimes she blasts the music on her Pip-Boy just to spite him.

Cecilia kisses Griffin, between his cheekbone and jawline, and there’s a shudder that runs through his body that screams _Barbara_ , like he and Atlas aren’t widower and widow trying to get by in a world that’s too goddamn ugly for words.

“A lovely lady like that? You’d best hold onto her and never let go,” Brother Thomas says, smarmy, like the books say old car salesmen were before the war.

Atlas stays tight to his side like she knows men like him in a way that’s archaic and outdated, and Deacon is Griffin when he chuckles. “My girl knows she’s got the best man in town.”

He doesn’t deserve anything, much less deserve her, and Atlas certainly doesn’t need any more heartache than she’s already got. The spot where Atlas’s lips were burns with electricity, hot and cold, all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not super pleased with this but we're trying to transition here a little bit, if you can't tell  
> i hope you still enjoyed xx  
> [scream at me here](http://www.battlemastershepard.tumblr.com)


	16. a roman candle heart

“He’s a predator,” Clara says to Deacon the moment that they get any kind of time away from the rest of the Pillars of the Community. “W-when I got my law degree, I wanted to protect people from predators like Brother Thomas.”

Cecilia kissed Griffin, she reminds herself. It wasn’t Clara kissing Deacon. It was Cecilia kissing Griffin. Would Cecilia wear her hair down? No; it’s too much, too fast; the ponytail is safer, so much safer.

The Pillars of the Community are a con if Clara’s ever seen one. All the members give up their worldly possessions, but they aren’t really “given up.” A more fitting word, to Clara, is “confiscated.” Upon welcoming them with all the pomp and circumstance of a car salesman, Brother Thomas’s open arms collect nearly everything in Clara’s pack, save a few rubber bands that he deems worthless. Weaponless, she feels naked, or at least she does until she feels the familiar steel of the knife in her boot.

Clara doesn’t know what Brother Thomas does with all the items he’s collected from the kind of ne’er-do-wells that an establishment like this attracts, but he takes them into the structure that seems to house a council of sorts instead of tossing all the “worldly temptations” into the irradiated river not far from where they’ve set up camp.

Yes, Brother Thomas is a predator. He’s a different breed than those from Clara’s pre-war life, but he’s a predator no less, one that feeds on those that have no place even in a world as backwards as the Commonwealth.

“He’s a predator,” Clara repeats, because Deacon doesn’t answer her the first time she says it. “I-”

“Shh, sweetheart,” Deacon says, and Clara’s heart swells in a way that she can’t quite reconcile. “We’ll talk like that after everybody else has gone to bed.”

When he speaks, he’s raised his voice a little louder than her whisper, and when he gestures his head to the left, Clara understands. They’re not alone; there’s a woman, five or six yards to the left of them, wrapped in a ratty blanket up off stage-right. She’s got big eyes, almost fully dilated, like she can see everything even if it’s something she doesn’t really want to see. Brother Thomas gave Cecilia and Griffin his blessing, and so Deacon and Clara will share the stage itself with several other members of the Community.

Apparently, dirty mattresses are not the kind of worldly possessions that Brother Thomas is interested in. If anyone had asked Clara a year ago to sleep on something she wouldn’t even call a bed, she would have laughed in their face. Here, though, her feet ache, and she is ready to lay down even if she has to kill a man for it.

Deacon sits on the edge of the cot closest to them, and the all-too-tempting image of how her body would fit spooning into his creeps in before she can stop it. She could write it off as Cecilia, even, pretend that he’s Griffin and not a man almost twice her age and everything her now-deceased husband would hate about this world.

“I’m gonna walk the perimeter, G-Griff,” Clara says, managing to use the code name and not call him Deacon despite the butterflies all these thoughts are giving her. “Need to clear my head.”

“Suit yourself, boss,” Deacon says, and Clara thinks that’s a weird thing to call your fake girlfriend, but no one else bats an eye at it. She turns to go, but Deacon grabs her wrist before she takes another step, pulling her in. To any outsider, it would look like lovers whispering to one another, and it almost even tricks Clara. Deacon’s stubble brushes her earlobe, and his hot breath makes her cold. “Keep an eye out for Emogene,” he says, quietly, like a secret, rubbing his thumb where her pulse would be if her heart hadn’t stopped at the contact. “Be careful, Atlas. I’ll see what I can hear here.”

And suddenly, for the second time that day, Griffin and Cecilia share a kiss as he places his lips on the inside of her wrist. Clara’s blood runs hot, but it’s her own fault for getting so invested in Cecilia as a character.

There’s nowhere in the structure that the Pillars inhabit that affords any kind of privacy, and there’s a wistfulness that Clara is feeling that requires being alone. All things considered, though, she and Deacon aren’t imprisoned here, so no one bats an eye when she makes her way down to the little trickle of a river that runs nearby.

She hasn’t listened to the tape since Codsworth gave it to her, and when Clara had the first time, it made her nearly catatonic. Clara tries on a stony face, sliding the holo into place, and pressing play.

“ _Hi honey,”_ Nate says, in a voice that sends her back two hundred years, “ _Listen. I don’t think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are… but we’re going to anyway.”_

Clara hasn’t cried in at least days, if not weeks, a sure sign of adjusting if ever she’s seen one, but Nate’s voice isn’t a dream or a hallucination this time. It’s a recording, but it’s _real_ , and it’s him, and suddenly her eyes are hot and her cheeks are wet and she can’t _breathe._

* * *

 

Atlas is fucking not as bright as he thinks she is if she thinks Deacon’s going to let her just meander around out here without any backup, like they haven’t been watching each other’s sixes since she wandered into Diamond City. Granted, Atlas hadn’t known he was watching her back for a lot of that, at least up until she officially met the Railroad, but the point stands.

They’re going to be camped out here for at least a couple of days, trying to sniff out Emogene. That’s probably going to happen by gaining trust with Brother Thomas and then stealing her away. For right now, though, Atlas’s words about him being a predator ring pretty true, and Deacon’ll be damned if Griffin would let anything happen to Cecilia.

She surprises him almost immediately, leaving the plot that the Pillars of the Community have staked out and instead walking towards the little river that she’d jokingly told him Brother Thomas might throw all their belongings in. Atlas had said that with a lot of anxiety, and when Deacon had asked if she was going to make it, she’d just said, “I’d worked r-really hard to get all of that stuff so it could help me get Shaun back.”

Atlas always knows just how to keep things in perspective when he’s about to make an irreverent joke.

But he’s got no clue what she’s doing. Atlas has made loads of progress; her stutter has almost disappeared, and she gets better with Deliverer by the day, and her as Cecilia looked as good as a lot of the roles Deacon has played.

He stays at a safe distance when she finally takes a seat at the bank of the river, and Atlas looks down at her Pip-Boy thoughtfully. There’s a rustling of movement, and suddenly a man’s voice; Deacon’s eyes flick from side to side before realizing it’s a holo, and it takes a few more moments before he realizes that this must be Atlas’s beloved Nate.

This feels too private, as the man’s voice keeps speaking, but Deacon can’t look away, even as Atlas’s body begins to tremble.

“ _You are kind, and loving, and funny. And patient. So patient,”_ the voice says, and Atlas throws her head back in something close to agony. Deacon feels a flicker of what might be empathy, maybe even pain for her pain, before he swallows it and buries it deep beneath every mask he’s ever worn.

The moon is bright tonight, and if not for the relatively varied cover available, Atlas might have made him easily. Now, she’s absorbed by the holo, far from the Atlas he’s watched her become and very close to the scared little vault dweller that he watched rise out of the ground what feels like centuries ago.

Deacon can’t hear her crying, but he knows that she is.

“ _Everything we do,”_ Nate says, and then he takes a deep, breathy pause before continuing, “ _No matter how hard… We do it for our family.”_

There’s a whimper there that’s not from the holo, and it’s hard not to be Griffin for the moment, to go to her and say that it’ll be okay even when Deacon’s not sure that it will.

“ _Bye, darlin’.”_

Deacon should leave, should go, but he can’t take his eyes off of her, and he’s not even sure what he’d be worth in a fight right now if something should sneak up on her and take Atlas by surprise.

“ _We love you.”_

Her hair swings from side to side as she shakes her head, and Atlas’s whole body is shaking anyway. It takes her too long to eject the holo, and he’s a little far away to notice the details, but Deacon thinks she rubs a thumb over it almost tenderly. Atlas leans forward and kisses the tape, chastely, secretly, and Deacon shouldn’t be here but he is and he can’t back out now.

And she lays the holo in the river, gently, like a child in a basket, like she’s hoping that it might float downstream to safety.

Deacon disappears, and acts like he’s not awake when Atlas slides onto a mattress nearby his, still shaking.

* * *

 

Letting go of the holo is a goodbye that is necessary, but that doesn’t make it easy. It hurts like a hole that can’t be filled, like a burn that keeps searing, but it erases any guilt that was left of surviving and leaves only determination behind. Nate was beautiful and real and a love that she’ll never forget, but Clara will live and find Shaun despite his loss.

_Everything we do, no matter how hard… we do it for our family._

Those are Nate’s words, not hers. It’s dishonoring him not to push on, no matter the difficulty.

Besides, Deacon will have her back, whether he’s Griffin or Jackson or even Marcus the godforsaken Diamond City guard.

No matter what, though, the first order of business is to find Emogene, because if they don’t find Emogene, they don’t get paid, and if Clara doesn’t get paid, she’s going to have a hell of a time getting the gear to find Shaun.

The morning after sending her past down the river, Clara meets Nadia, properly. Clara recognizes her the second that Nadia introduces herself as the woman who’d been wrapped up in the blanket the night before, though her eyes don’t look nearly as big or ethereal as they had in sunlight as they had then.

Brother Thomas puts everyone to work; in his impassioned speech to Cecilia and Griffin, he claims, once again, that everything is for the good of the many, but Clara keeps an eye out in the field where she and Deacon are stationed all day and never sees Brother Thomas lift a finger.

She and Deacon and Nadia are the only three working the small field, which consists of mostly melons and tatos. There’s a brahmin grazing nearby, but it’s almost unhealthy-looking, underfed, like no one’s given a thought to it in days. Unbidden, Clara wonders if she looked a little like the brahmin when she first came up out of the vault, uncared for and hungry. When Deacon goes to fetch water for the three of them, he pats the brahmin’s flank, and it trails after him.

Clara watches him go, anticipating the water thirstily, and she almost doesn’t hear Nadia say, “He adores you.”

“S-sorry?” The statement takes Clara off guard, and she stumbles over the single word question.

Nadia chuckles. “He checks on you every thirty seconds, Cecilia. Your Griffin? He’s head over heels.”

Griffin loves her. The music swells, deep in her abdomen, and it’s all Clara can do not to open her mouth and sing before she remembers that she’s _Cecilia_ , Griffin loves _Cecilia,_ not Clara.

That’s why it doesn’t feel wrong when Cecilia says, “He’s wonderful.”

Nadia’s kind, but tired-looking, an ex-chem-head who’s still on the tough side of recovery. It makes Clara sick. Nadia laughs, tells her stories of being a Diamond City reject who could never walk a straight line between the jet and the alcohol. She’s exactly the kind of person a predator like Brother Thomas likes to prey on, vulnerable and trying to turn her life around.

In another life, Nadia would be in rehabilitation, but here, she’s slumming it with a sleaze like Brother Thomas, scraping by with a smile on her face that belies none of the pain she’s gone through.

Deacon brings back the water, and when Nadia winks at her, Cecilia blushes and smiles just slightly. When the sun starts to set and they begin to pack it in, Nadia bumps Clara’s shoulder and whispers, “Hey, I stole an extra melon from the yard if you and your boyfriend want in?”

Deacon makes eye contact with Nadia, and they share a high-five behind Clara’s back before he says, “It’s a date.”

Nadia walks them down to the river after lights out, and when Clara looks up at the sky, she’s thankful for the bright moon. She’s been walking this Commonwealth for a little while now, but it’s still too easy for a single misstep to become a disaster in one way or another.

“It’s tough being around people since I got clean,” Nadia says, cutting the melon with a knife that Clara wouldn’t quite call sterile, “Everyone’s too loud. People are okay in little groups, but more than about three at a time is too much.”

Nadia’s hands are shaky, but she finally manages to get the job done, and she hands Clara the first slice of melon before beginning to cut a second piece.

“What brought you here, then?” Deacon asks, waiting patiently for his turn at a bite.

Nadia sighs, and sets the knife down for a moment. “I was never in a good place in Diamond City. Got caught thieving one too many times, and the mayor blackballed me. Still, even if people were too loud, I couldn’t handle just being… alone. For all its flaws, the Pillars took me in, even if I had to give up everything. They let me stay when nobody else would.”

Diamond City folks don’t like Goodneighbor, Clara knows, but she feels like Nadia would have been much safer there than she is here. In that moment, Clara resolves that when she and Deacon leave, Nadia isn’t staying, whether she comes with them or not.

“What flaws, Nadia?” Clara asks, and Nadia sighs again.

“This is supposed to be about community,” Nadia says, handing Deacon his slice before finally taking a bite into what’s left, “but we never see any turnaround. We keep each other safe from outside threats, but… Thomas is weird. And a little scary.”

“Scary?” Deacon asks, and it’s all Griffin, clumsy cluelessness and misguided bravado. “How’s he scary?”

Nadia squirms, uncomfortable. “Well, why does he make us give everything up? Where does it all go? And… sometimes girls that he takes a liking to… they just don’t come back.”

Clara’s eyes narrow warily, and Deacon leans back like he’s surveying the area for a threat. Nadia’s eyes flit between them before she shakes her head and scrambles to her feet. “I-I’m sorry,” she says, backpedaling. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know why I said that. Please. Forget I said anything.” When Deacon and Clara don’t say anything right away, Nadia shakes her head and says, “Thanks for spending time with me. I don’t really have any friends anymore.”

Then she’s gone, back to the amphitheater. Deacon sighs, and Clara mirrors him.

“We’ve got to f-find her. Emogene. Tomorrow.” Clara’s words are a little more rushed than she means them to be, but this isn’t about a job. Nadia had been scared.

Deacon nods, and stands, holding out his hand to pull Clara to her feet. “I think I know just the way to do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy thanksgiving fellow americans!!!! i work retail so the next several days are going to be nuts for me. hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!  
> we'll be getting back to the main storyline soon; i plan on wrapping up the cabot mini-arc within the next 3 if not 2 chapters, and then we'll go and meet dr. amari in goodneighbor!  
> please stick with me! your devotion means so much!


	17. hailin' from rock bottom

Deacon wakes early, before anyone else on the stage of the amphitheater, and stretches, yawning silently.

Well, maybe not everyone. Nadia’s bunk is suspiciously empty, her ratty blanket piled up haphazardly. She’s the one that he’s looking for anyway, a susceptible link in this cult that hasn’t been completely turned to Brother Thomas’s side yet.

Deacon looks down at Atlas, snoring more quietly than usual, stretched out completely over the mattress. If nothing else, it makes for a good cover as to why he and Atlas don’t share a bed; she always sleeps like _that_. There’d be no room left for him.

Atlas leaves her hair tied back even when she sleeps, but Deacon lets Griffin kneel down and tuck a wild strand back behind Cecilia’s ear. Cecilia even smiles without waking at the touch.

“ _Godmorgen, min skat_ ,” Atlas says, mumbling, still not awake, and Deacon doesn’t know what it means, but it sounds tender, a kindness he doesn’t deserve. He disappears from the stage before a bleary-eyed Atlas is the death of him, all messy hair and sleepy smiles.

The Commonwealth’s not as cold as it probably was back in Atlas’s day, but it isn’t warm. Deacon shakes the last of the sleepiness off of him as the cold rolls in waves across his body. What’s he doing up when the sun has barely touched the ground yet?

“Morning, Griffin.”

Deacon hears Nadia’s voice to his left, over by where the melon rows used to be before she harvested them yesterday, the same place that he and Atlas have been stationed.

“Morning, miss Nadia,” Deacon says, a smooth smile falling into place like it’s a part of his own skin. “You’re up and about early.”

Nadia smirks at him, and the smirk pulls the skin around her mouth too tight. She looks a little too close to how Atlas did before she was Atlas, when she was just the vault girl inadvertently helping Piper Wright get back into Diamond City. Griffin’s heart aches, because Nadia looks run-down and hungry and tired, but it’s not just that. Magnolia is run-down and tired and even a little hungry, too, but Magnolia belongs. Nadia doesn’t, and that’s how she wound up in Brother Thomas’s clutches to begin with.

There are moments when it’s easy to distrust Desdemona, because her singlemindedness blinds her to the misfortune of people who she never even realizes exist. Deacon’s heart aches. The Railroad could help people like Nadia, too; synths aren’t the only people hurting in the Commonwealth, and even with someone like Atlas at the helm, Deacon doesn’t feel like he can trust the Minutemen to take care of them.

Nadia deserves freedom, too.

Her hands are in the dirt, and she pays nearly no more attention to him until Deacon kneels down by her side and begins helping her plough the dirt. Why they don’t have any kind of tool to really help them with this is beyond Deacon, but if he wants to maintain this rapport that Griffin and Cecilia have with Nadia, he’ll have to get his nails dirty.

When he’s down next to her, Nadia smiles. “Letting your girlfriend sleep in?”

Griffin breathes out, and looks up at the sky. “If I could, I’d let her sleep all day if she wanted.”

Nadia sighs dreamily, hands working and never looking up from the dirt. “You guys are so lucky to have each other. I’d kill to have a partner like that.”

Griffin smiles like Deacon used to smile about Barbara, and feels a weight in his chest become a lightness. “She’s the best partner I could ever ask for.”

Biting her lip, Deacon thinks Nadia’s holding back a giggle, and he takes the opening. “By the way, Nadia,” Griffin says, sliding a lilt into his voice that makes his words sound less serious than they are, “Cecilia has a friend, Emogene. She’s the one who told us about this place, and Cecilia’d like to see her, but we haven’t been able to find her anywhere. Now, Cecilia doesn’t want to make waves here, but she and Emogene haven’t seen each other in a long time. Do you have any idea where she is?”

The only person less steely than Nadia is probably someone like Atlas, and Nadia’s visage crumbles. She has no poker face at all, and it would almost be endearing if it didn’t mean that Nadia was probably going to die young.

“Emogene?” Nadia asks, and she won’t make eye contact with him; Deacon knows a lie coming when he sees it. She looks everywhere but him, and says, “She was really… close with Brother Thomas, but I haven’t seen her for a few days. I thought maybe she had just moved on from the Pillars.”

“Oh,” Griffin says, and does his best to look despondent. “Cecilia will be so disappointed.”

It works. Nadia doesn’t say anything else, but her eyes soften like she pities him, and that’s exactly what he wants.

* * *

 

Clara wakes, and the sun is high enough that it hurts her eyes when she opens them too quickly. Why is it so late? She has a habit of sleeping too long, but Deacon always goes to bed after her and wakes before. Normally, he rouses her before this time of day, though. She’s the only one left sleeping in the amphitheater.

Stretching, Clara sits up and hastily rearranges her hair. It’s looser than it had been when she wore the bun, but it’s still tidy, put-together. This wasteland has changed her ( _Deacon has changed you_ , sings a little voice in the back of her head that is beautiful, clear, and vibrant), but she’s still Clara, despite everything and perhaps _in spite of_ everything.

When she looks up, the sun silhouettes a figure, and her eyes adjust a moment before Clara recognizes Deacon, bathed in light and looking almost beautiful.

“Good morning, sweet Cecilia,” Deacon says, sauntering over her, but he’s Griffin first and Deacon second when he swoops down and brushes his lips on Clara’s forehead. Clara’s heart flutters, but then she sees Nadia in the doorway behind her, and it’s much easier to rationalize the warmness in her gut when it’s Griffin kissing Cecilia.

She misses Nate, still. Clara would even say she still loves him; how couldn’t she? The father of her child, the reason she left her homeland? Nate would never leave her.

And still. Deacon’s lips are too dry, chapped and wind burnt, but they feel soft, like they would feel right no matter where they were.

She likes him, Clara thinks, and not just in the way she finds him attractive (though it helps). It’s not a revelation or shock, but a recognition of something that feels like it’s been on its way for a while. Clara likes the liar, with his too-smug smile and the way he always makes her feel like she’s got a chance to survive and maybe even thrive here.

But it’s Griffin kissing Cecilia, not Deacon kissing Clara. He doesn’t even look at her as Clara anymore; Deacon hasn’t called her that since she took on Atlas as a moniker.

It’s stupid, anyway. She’s not a child, and she hasn’t mooned after a boy since high school.

“Why didn’t you wake me, s-sugar?” Clara asks with all the composure she can muster, never forgetting that Nadia’s standing right there.

“Well, you seemed exhausted after last night,” Deacon says, and somehow it’s extra scandalous now that Clara’s coming to terms with the fact that there’s a very real attraction that has been manifesting so slowly that Clara hasn’t even noticed it. Deacon smiles at the blush that crawls up her neck, and continues, “Nadia says she hasn’t seen Emogene. You’re sure this was the last place she said she was going?”

Clara opens her mouth and starts to follow up on his question, but Nadia, who has been looking more and more nervous by the moment, says, “Fine! Fine! Just… just follow me. And be quiet. They don’t like it when people question things that go on around here.”

It’s the middle of the day, so everyone’s absorbed enough in their tasks that no one spares a glance at Cecilia, Griffin, and Nadia, and it’s a lucky blessing. Everything Deacon knows is about flying under the radar and being unnoticed, and Clara’s picked up a thing or two under his wing, but if they only had one word to describe Nadia, Clara would use _conspicuous_. Still, they make quick time, despite Nadia’s general unsneakiness, and they end up in front of a door out back that Clara might not have noticed without someone planting her in front of it.

“I’m no good with a lockpick, but… if either of you are good enough at it, the last I knew, Emogene was in here.” The door looks unassuming, and Clara doesn’t know Emogene at all, but the idea of being locked behind any door, no matter how nice the room, is horrifying.

Clara was asleep in a vault for two centuries, and even if she can’t remember most of it, the idea of being locked away like that ever again sends shivers down her spine.

“Alex, what’s the plan for tonight anyway?” Brother Thomas’s voice carries a little too well, and Nadia’s eyes widen in panic before she bolts. The second that it takes Clara to react is a second that they no longer have to run.

Clara hears Deacon say, “Trust me,” words directly at odds with everything he’s ever told her to believe about him, and then Clara feels a calloused hand on the back of her head, wrapped in her hair behind the hairtie.

She should be remembering Nate, Clara thinks, but they’re Cecilia and Griffin. It’s fine.

Griffin’s lips brush hers, and Cecilia whimpers softly. Nadia’s long gone, and for the three seconds until Brother Thomas comes around that corner, Cecilia is hungry. Griffin bites her lip, hard enough to send fire through Cecilia’s core. Griffin’s hand curls in on the back of her hand, and Cecilia leans in, trying to savor the moment that’s about to disappear. He’s warm, and he tastes like smoke and the kind of grease that she always smells when he’s cleaning his rifle –

Brother Thomas clears his throat, and when Griffin pulls away, Cecilia tries not to look too breathless.

“S-sorry, Brother Thomas,” Clara manages, “We were just leaving.”

Deacon grabs her by the hand (and there’s music there, where they touch, all violins and strings) and pulls her away, and Clara manages an airheaded giggle. When they’re out of immediate danger, Deacon sends a sly smile her way. “So,” he says, in that voice that always makes Clara blush, even when she doesn’t want to. “Think Glory’s a better kisser?”

“I’d have t-to compare both kisses side by side before coming to a v-verdict,” Clara says, and she hates that her stutter has returned, like she’s a little girl.

Deacon laughs, and it sounds like music; Clara can’t help but smile. “That’s my girl,” Deacon says, and Clara’s smile widens, and oh God, is it hard for Clara to distinguish between Cecilia and Clara and isn’t this Deacon speaking to Clara and not Griffin talking to Cecilia?

They wait for nightfall, going through the motions until then, and Clara always keeps an eye open for Nadia, trying to ignore the singing that swells whenever she sights Deacon in her peripheral vision. She likes him, liked how being kissed felt (like not being alone, not being _lonely_ , like someone understands her in this world that’s foreign and futuristic and barbaric), but they’re still just partners. Deacon and Atlas, operatives and sort-of-spies.

They’re good friends. Best friends, even. He’s the best thing Clara’s got, and she’s not going to ruin it based on butterflies she feels when they’re playing characters.

Deacon, displaying one of her favorite traits about him, lets Clara take the lead. Even in all she loved Nate, he babied her like she didn’t know a goddamn thing about the way the world worked, like she hadn’t uprooted and moved to America for Nate on a whim. Nate trusted her, but Deacon _trusts_ her.

When they get to the door where Nadia told them Emogene was being held, Clara puts her ear up to the door. There’s shuffling of some kind inside, though Clara can’t pinpoint it. She and Deacon are crouching next to the lock, and as Clara braces herself to take a crack at it, Deacon chuckles lightly in her ear. “Let me give it a go, boss? I know you can do it, but this just gives me a chance to prove myself.”

Clara laughs, relieved. She’s sure he knows that Clara couldn’t pick the lock even if she wanted to, but, for all his untrustworthiness, he’s got her back… or at least Deacon’s invested a lot in getting Clara to think so.

Deacon busts one bobby pin, then two, and he turns to look at Clara, who’s starting to feel a little nervous. He looks at her and smiles, and if Clara thought Deacon had it in his repertoire, his smile would almost look sheepish. “Always embarrassing when you can’t perform right away,” he says with a laugh, and the third bobby pin’s the charm, because the door pops open.

“I don’t mind waiting for you, Deacon,” Clara says, and the banter comes easily. Deacon smirks back at her, and she can always be sure that Deacon won’t ever take her too seriously.

The door doesn’t swing open all the way until Clara pushes it, and Deacon falls into step behind her once again.

Clara doesn’t know what she expects to see behind the door, but what she doesn’t expect to see is Emogene lounging on a couch with a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

* * *

 

It’s easy enough to convince Emogene to come back with them, even when Brother Thomas stumbles in on him and Atlas walking Emogene out of her cozy little holding cell. Deacon almost breaks a sweat when he walks in, but Atlas handles it like a pro before Deacon can even begin wheedling.

“Brother Thomas!” Atlas says with a big, wide smile that almost would fool Deacon if he hadn’t used the same smile himself a million times to get what he wanted. “I found Emogene! I thought for sure I was never going to see her again.”

And that big old smile stays on her face when she wraps her arms around Emogene. Emogene, for her part, looks confused, but doesn’t resist, and Atlas pulls Emogene by the hand out the door and into the night.

“Your family is really worried about you,” Atlas says, and her accent is thick as ever but the stutter’s mostly gone, except for that time it wormed its way back into her speech after Griffin kissed Cecilia. She’s gotten good at playing roles, and love-struck girlfriend is no different. “They sent us to get you back home,” Atlas continues, smiling softly.

“Ugh.” Emogene scoffs, and tosses her cigarette to the ground. “Jack’s always determined to keep me on the shortest leash possible. But fine. I’ll go home. At least this time they found competent lapdogs.”

Emogene walks away before Atlas can even offer to escort her home, and Deacon laughs. “She looks like she’d die before she asked someone for help. No wonder Magnolia likes her.” Atlas purses her lips, like the answer doesn’t satisfy her, and Deacon says, “Figure we can head back to Sanctuary and get some rest before collecting the reward from the Cabots? HQ is closer, of course, but every time I’m near Carrington my heart shrinks another size.”

Atlas exhales through her nose and rubs her temples, though she doesn’t seem unamused. “Sure, Deacon. I’d like to go home for a m-minute anyway, to check in on everybody, and especially to make sure that Amelia’s settling in okay. Can we get all our stuff back? The s-stuff Brother Thomas stole?”

Deacon laughs. “Our stuff? I already stole it all back this morning. It’s hidden down by the river where we had dinner with Nadia last night.”

“Oh, Deacon,” she says, and smiles a Cecilia smile.

Deacon matches it, and says, “What can I say? I’m a romantic.”

Deacon follows Atlas back to where they slept the night previous, and she collects what little Brother Thomas allowed them to hold onto. From their left, Deacon hears, “Are… are you two leaving?”

Atlas’s gaze rockets toward the sound, but softens when it lands on Nadia.

“Hi,” Atlas says, and her body’s still edges and angles even if it’s filled out a bit, but her voice is soft. “I wanted to find you before we left anyway.”

There’s a sales pitch coming. Deacon can see it.

“I know you were looking for…” Atlas pauses, searching for a good word to fill in what she’s trying to say. “I don’t know. Family. Home. Safety.” Atlas takes Nadia’s hand, and says, “My name’s not Cecilia. I was here to find Emogene, and my name is Clara. And…” Nadia recoils, barely, but enough that both Atlas and Deacon notice it. “And I know a little place that is everything the Pillars of the Community are and more.”

Nadia stays quiet for a long time, so long that Deacon’s sure she’s going to refuse Atlas’s offer, but then she says, “Where is it?”

Atlas smiles, and it’s so infectious and pure that Deacon almost feels whole for a moment. “It’s northwest of here, Nadia. It’s a little slice of sanctuary.”

“I’m not perfect, Cecilia… Er. Clara. Sorry. That’ll take a little getting used to. I’m still trying to get clean, and I sleep in too late, and I stole crops _at least_ once a day here.”

Atlas’s grin gets a little wider with every flaw she lists, and when Nadia stops to breathe, Deacon barks out a laugh in the pause.

“Oh boy,” Deacon says, pushing his sunglasses up a little higher on his face, “Just wait until you meet Hancock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see!!! payoff!!! i promised!! ok it's not really "deacon and clara" kissing but!!!  
> i'm sorry for the wait; it's been a wild month between finals and black friday and the whole goddamn thing, but if you enjoyed this chapter i'd LOVE to see some feedback. your comments are really the only thing that keep me going, and even one brightens the darkest of days xx
> 
> [you can also come chat with me on tumblr](http://www.battlemastershepard.tumblr.com)


	18. running out of breath

Nadia’s a little offended to start off with that they lied to her, but Cecilia ( _Clara_ , Nadia corrects herself) seems genuinely remorseful.

“I really am sorry we lied to you,” Clara says when they’re barely out of earshot of Brother Thomas’s goons, “Lying is, well… a n-necessary evil for me and my friends.”

Nadia’s skeptical, at first; she hadn’t known Cecilia very long, and she’s known Clara even less. “So your name’s really Clara?”

Clara grimaces, and briefly Nadia wonders what she’s said wrong, but the expression is so brief that Nadia thinks she must have imagined it. “That’s what they call me here. Back home they said it a little differently, but it was at least spelled the same.”

They walk, and walk, and then they walk some more, and despite the deception they used to infiltrate the Pillars of the Community, Nadia finds herself believing Clara. There was a phrase for what she had thought she was signing on for when she agreed to travel with Clara and Deacon (what kind of name is _that_?), _out of the frying pan and into the fire_ , but so far it’s been less of a fire and more of an exercise in getting to know one another.

She doesn’t trust the man that’s with them, not really. That doesn’t mean that Deacon has bad intentions, necessarily, but he’s hiding something, or several somethings, and Nadia can’t get past the fact that Deacon is so _clearly_ not his real name. Clara’s got a code name too, of course; Deacon never calls his partner Clara, always Atlas, but Clara at least has the good faith in Nadia to trust her with her real name.

Maybe that makes Clara naïve, but to Nadia, it makes her infinitely more trustworthy. Still, Deacon and Clara are in sync with one another perfectly, and Nadia has to wonder how much of the act had been an _act_. Deacon’s a storyteller at heart, modifying kernels of truth into tales that are almost unrecognizable, and while Clara doesn’t believe any of it, she soaks it in anyway, laughing and poking holes in his stories at any opportunity possible.

They’re not Cecilia and Griffin at all. That much is more and more recognizable with every step that they take towards Clara’s Sanctuary.

And yet.

He slings an arm around her shoulder, and Clara stiffens but doesn’t pull away, smile never leaving her face. “You’re unbelievable, Deacon,” Clara laughs, and Nadia doesn’t think she’s imagining Clara’s accent nearly disappear, even as the hand wearing a wedding ring disappears into her pocket. She hadn’t worn it when she was Cecilia, and Deacon’s not wearing one, so that’s probably a wound that still stings.

When the sun starts to set, Clara suggests that they bunk down for the night. Nadia doesn’t protest. Deacon just chuckles, and says, “Look at us, getting a full night’s sleep.”

By the time they find a suitable place, beneath a rock face that juts out above them, and start a fire, Nadia’s exhausted, but mostly hungry. Deacon lights up a cigarette next to the fire as Clara starts cooking what look like iguana bits, but Clara shoots him a look, and he sighs.

“Sorry, boss,” he says before standing and wandering several feet away from the fire to smoke. Nadia doesn’t think she’s imagining the amused twinkle in Clara’s eyes.

“Now that he’s stopped talking for longer than thirty s-seconds,” Clara says, “Is there anything you’d like to know? We should be back at Sanctuary by tomorrow, but I’m kept absurdly b-busy when I’m there, so we probably won’t have much of an opportunity to talk.”

Nadia takes one more look at Clara, hunched over, looking every part the wastelander even in her bright blue vault suit that places her firmly as an outsider in anyone’s eyes, and decides that Clara looks like a goddamn savior. Brother Thomas lured people in, all charisma with evil underneath, but to Nadia, at least in the beginning, he had been the lesser of two evils. After all, would she rather be beneath someone of questionable background and character, or starve while retaining her own morality? It was much easier to get sober on a full stomach, so she’d latched onto the bandwagon.

Clara, though. There’s something real about Clara that Nadia can’t put her finger on, and when Clara looks at her and smiles, Nadia thinks she’s going to melt.

Because, well.

Clara is _kind_.

“What’s your favorite color?” Nadia asks, quietly, ignoring the itch in her forearm that always seems to appear when she’s craving a hit of something, anything.

Clara raises an eyebrow, like she doesn’t think she’s heard Nadia correctly, but she answers anyway. “Blue.”

Nadia snorts. “Guess that explains the vault suit.”

Clara looks down like she’s forgotten she’s wearing it, and giggles. “Oh. No. Like the ocean.” Firelight glints off her wedding ring, and she looks over her shoulder for Deacon, like she needs to at least know he’s around, somewhere. “What about y-you?”

“Me?” Nadia chews her lip, thinking. “Yellow, I think. Or orange. Like a sunrise.”

Clara is kind, and, well, it’s been a long time since Nadia’s had a friend who wasn’t in it for the jet, and it doesn’t take too long for them to be finding out about each other rather than Nadia finding out about Sanctuary.

* * *

Atlas hates cigarettes. It’s really a bad time for her to be alive then, because everybody and their mother in the wasteland smokes something. She never says anything, not directly, but her eyes narrow whenever he lights one, and, well, far be it from him to make Griffin’s Cecilia uncomfortable.

He and Atlas discussed going to the Cabots’ first for payment, then taking Nadia back to Sanctuary. Geographically, that makes the most sense. However, when Atlas argued that it was going to be hard to explain Nadia to Jackson and Lucy’s (admittedly eccentric) employers, going back to Sanctuary first just made more sense.

So he walks away for his smoke, far enough where Atlas shouldn’t be able to smell it, but not so far that he can’t hear her and Nadia talking. They’re playing some kind of icebreaker game where they ask each other questions, something Atlas suggested. It must have been popular pre-war, because in the climate of the Commonwealth, it just seems naïve to think anyone would actually answer a goddamn question truthfully.

Maybe that’s Deacon’s insecurity talking. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Atlas and Nadia are laughing with each other, and Deacon’s learning things, however arbitrary they are, about Atlas.

He likes her laugh, genuinely. He’s always spinning stories, and he’d be doing that anyway, but now that she’s around, it’s mostly to hear her laughter jingle in the air.

Her favorite color is blue. (Deacon’s is green.)

If she had to describe herself in three words, she’d use resourceful, adaptable, and resilient. (Deacon would call himself self-preserving, intuitive, and aloof.)

She had her first kiss when she was fourteen. (Deacon was thirteen.)

She thinks her best features are her dimples (she doesn’t specify where?). (Deacon can confidently say that he doesn’t really have a best feature. Maybe the wig.).

Her first language is called Danish.

 _Danish_. Like Shakespeare’s prince of Denmark, Hamlet. He’s pretty well-read, a downright scholar by the Commonwealth’s standards, but his knowledge on Denmark is pretty thin. There are some famous fairy tales from there: _The Ugly Duckling, The Little Match Girl, The Emperor’s New Clothes_. That’s… about it? He knows depressingly little, and it wouldn’t be so discouraging, but it’s Deacon’s _job_ to know things, and he can’t afford to get things wrong about his partner.

He also hadn’t realized that Atlas had stopped wearing her wedding ring until she suddenly has it on again, and there’s a stirring in his stomach that feels like undercooked mirelurk cake.

Deacon quashes the feeling, files it away, crushes it under his boot like the half-smoked cigarette he tossed to the ground just moments previously. It doesn’t matter. They’re going to find the Institute, and they’re going to get Atlas’s son back, and then…

What then?

* * *

Clara adores Nadia, and by the time they reach Sanctuary, she knows her impulsive invitation is the thing she regrets the least thus far in the Commonwealth.

She hadn’t thought ahead enough to warn Nadia that if she had a problem with ghouls to keep it to herself, but Nadia doesn’t even flinch when Hancock hollers down at them from his post at the watchtower. Or, well, Nadia doesn’t flinch until she realizes Hancock’s higher than a kite.

“Is that that sweet little vault sister back in _my_ town?” Hancock shouts, leaning over the railing a little further than Clara thinks is safe. Clara chuckles and opens her mouth to respond, but Deacon beats her to it.

“You might buy me _dinner_ first, Hancock,” Deacon says with a grin, and from the angle that he’s looking up at Hancock, Clara can almost see behind his sunglasses. She wonders what color his eyes are behind them: green, brown, blue?

Hancock laughs. “Few drinks and even I can’t handle you, Deacon.”

“New friend for us, General?” Clara hears, and Preston Garvey’s next to them with a smile on his face that’s so radiant it wouldn’t seem genuine coming from anyone else. Deacon’s too engaged in his banter with Hancock to bother greeting Preston, though Clara’s not naïve enough to think that Deacon isn’t hyper-aware of everything that’s happening around them.

“Nadia’s going to need a warm bed and a seat at d-dinner,” Clara says in the warmest voice possible, and Nadia smiles a little shyly.

“The Minutemen are always happy to help,” Preston says, and Nadia’s gratitude almost singlehandedly makes the whole Minuteman charade worth it. It’s a testament to how safe Nadia feels that she doesn’t even look back when Preston leads her away.

Clara doesn’t know if Deacon is following her when she starts towards her pre-war home. He’s had her back this long and hasn’t killed her yet, hasn’t even tried to hurt her, not intentionally. Despite the note he left her, that godforsaken recall code ( _you can’t trust everyone)_ , Clara trusts him, and really, it’s too difficult to reconcile those words with his gently whispered, “ _trust me,_ ” right before she tasted his gunpowder and cigarette lips.

If he wants to follow her into the most tender place she has, then she’ll let him. She doesn’t trust him to follow if she asked him to, but she trusts him not to drive a knife in if he makes the choice to stay with her when she goes to a decidedly dark place.

* * *

The last and only time Deacon was in Sanctuary, he and Atlas stayed a record of an hour and a half before Atlas found out that Nick Valentine had been there with news. There hadn’t been a whole lot of time to orient himself to the settlement, but Deacon had managed to parse out a _few_ things.

The farms are on the east side of Sanctuary, and the houses are to the north, while people enter from the south. The west, though, seems pretty untouched – almost like a time capsule.

Hancock’s good enough to talk to, and entertaining to say the least, but Atlas is his partner. He doesn’t really think she’s trying to sneak; why would she have anything to hide here? She’s never hidden anything from Deacon anyway, except when she’s from, and Atlas tried to come clean about that before Deacon ever believed her.

Who just tells the _truth_ about something like that?

The point is, Atlas isn’t trying to sneak. She wouldn’t try to bug out on him. _He_ might try to bug out on _her_ , but the other way around? It’s completely at odds with everything about her.

Deacon doesn’t need a justification, but that seems a good enough justification to follow her as she wanders, slowly, towards that time capsule side of Sanctuary.

Atlas is from here, before the bombs fell. Deacon knows that. When she hesitates on the doorstep of a dilapidated structure that looks like it’s been left to rot for centuries, it’s clear.

She lived here, once. This was her house. She lived here with the man who gave her the ring that Deacon’s eyes always seem to drift towards.

When Atlas pauses, it’s brief, so brief that Deacon might not have noticed if it wasn’t his job. She crosses the threshold and disappears, and there’s a nosy part of Deacon that wants to follow, but a much larger part, a part that Barbara loved, that knows that this is a distinctly private place. He doesn’t follow any further, but he wants to.

Deacon hears a surprised yell from inside the building, and he raises his head sharply from where he’d been casually looking down. Turning, ready to go in, Deacon feels a hand on his arm. He looks at the hand sharply, and when his eyes rise, Deacon sees Amelia.

He had seen pock-marked ghoulskin and assumed that it was Hancock, but Amelia just says, “Give her a minute.”

Deacon’s muscles tense, and his eyes narrow behind his aviators. This feeling is… weird. Like she’s a friend, not just some means to an end for the Railroad. He mourns everyone who dies in the fight against the Institute, but losing Atlas might, well, really hurt.

Still, whatever Atlas is to Deacon, she was to Amelia first, so he’ll wait a second, just to humor her. Besides, Atlas has gotten good at taking care of herself. She’ll be okay for the moment that it takes to get on Amelia’s good side. So Deacon waits, and waits, and it feels like an eternity though it can’t really be more than a minute. Finally, just when Deacon’s ready to shake off Amelia’s arm, Deacon hears Atlas’s soft laugh, and he’s suddenly remembering Cecilia biting her wind-burnt lip after Griffin pulled away from their kiss.

And then there’s the music.

A smile spreads across Amelia’s face, and Deacon mirrors it, softer, subtler. Atlas is giggling the whole time and it keeps escalating until Deacon can’t tell what’s more beautiful – the piano, or the sound of her laugh carrying through Sanctuary.

“That’s my girl,” says Amelia, her eyes drifting shut, and Deacon’s eyes close, too, hanging on every note that Atlas plays.

* * *

Nadia thinks that Clara will stay longer than one night, but she doesn’t. When she wakes early the next morning, Nadia reports immediately to Preston Garvey for assignment, and the first thing he tells her is that she should go say goodbye to Clara and Deacon.

“Not sure I trust the guy,” Preston says under his breath afterwards, “But he keeps the General safe, so I shouldn’t complain.”

It’s good to know that she’s not the only one getting that kind of vibe off of Deacon.

Nadia weaves her way to the edge of Sanctuary, where Deacon and Clara will be leaving from. Clara introduced her to Amelia, and Nadia thinks that if Clara trusts her, then Nadia will, too. Amelia has a good sense of humor, and she’s got a protective streak that Nadia thinks will make it very difficult to relapse. Nadia wonders if Clara knew that when she introduced them.

When Deacon and Clara finally come into Nadia’s line of sight, it’s hard for Nadia not to do a double-take. Deacon’s hair is… gone? It must have been a wig, but he looks completely different without it. There’s no doubting that it’s him, though, because Clara’s at ease, ponytail swinging in the wind.

“Clara!” Nadia shouts out, and it gets her attention as Nadia approaches. “How do you say goodbye in Danish?”

Clara cocks her head to the side, and Nadia thinks that if she could see Deacon’s eyes, they’d be trained on Clara. “Goodbye? W-we would say, _farvel_ or _vi ses_.”

“What’s the difference?” Nadia asks, and Clara purses her lips, thinking.

“I suppose that _farvel_ means _goodbye_ , and _vi ses_ means _see you._ ”

“Oh,” Nadia says before smiling, “Then _vi ses!_ ”

“Your accent’s almost as bad as m-mine,” Clara says, laughing. “ _Vi ses_ , Nadia.”

Deacon mock-salutes Nadia lazily, and with one last smile, Clara and Deacon leave, side-by-side, in step with one another.

* * *

 They collect the caps from Edward Deegan on behalf of Jack Cabot. Deegan tells them that there’s no more work right now, though there may be something of a much more sensitive nature coming up in the near future. Deacon tells them they’ll be in touch.

When they step back out from the Cabot House, their pockets are much heavier, and Clara feels one step closer to finding Shaun. When Deacon asks, “What now, boss?” Clara smiles.

“Hopefully it’s been long enough that your doctor f-friend in Goodneighbor’s got time to see us,” Clara says, kicking the dirt beneath her feet.

“Aw, sweetheart,” Deacon says, and Clara doesn’t know what to do with the pet name, doesn’t know what the feeling means. “Anybody with their head on straight would have time for you.”

“That so, Griffin?” Clara asks, and it’s half-joke, half-bait, but the only time he’s called her _sweetheart_ she was Cecilia.

“Of course, Cecilia,” Deacon says, cupping the side of her face and kissing her cheek gently.

* * *

 They’re Griffin and Cecilia, not Deacon and Atlas, Deacon thinks. It’s fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope everybody had a wonderful holiday. i know i did!  
> i'm going on vacation saturday, so you guys might not see much of me for a little while, but i'll be back by the 8th of january, so i promise i'll be back eventually!!!  
> hope everybody enjoyed. thank you for reading. chat with me [here](http://www.battlemastershepard.tumblr.com) xx


	19. a princess cut from marble

After the Cabots pay them, he and Atlas make the trek back to Diamond City to rendezvous with Nick, as planned. The meeting is short out of necessity; Dr. Amari can’t wait on them forever, and meeting with her at _all_ makes Deacon wary. Bringing any attention to Goodneighbor is risky. Dr. Amari’s the _only_ person in the Railroad that even flirts with irreplaceable. Without her, synths run the risk of being ( _very_ ) extended, remote eyes of the Institute. They’ve got no chance for a fresh start, and that’s by far the most important part of the whole process.

As they approach the gates of Goodneighbor, Atlas asks, “Do you want to take point? We’re k-kind of endangering the Railroad for my personal crusade, after all.”

Deacon chuckles, if only to mask the unease settling in the pit of his stomach. It’s a sweet thought, really, but Atlas hasn’t gotten them killed so far. She’s been doing a lot more right things than wrong things. When he says, “Nah, Atlas, you’ve got it under control,” she smiles, and clearly Deacon has said the right thing. She’s wrong in thinking this is a personal crusade, though. This is the closest that the Railroad’s ever been to tangible evidence pertaining to the Institute’s whereabouts. She’s gotten them this far with maternal instinct, downright grit, and knowing just when to bat her eyebrows at a pretty girl. Deacon’s happy to let someone like that continue taking point.

They walk side by side. Deacon’s instinct, normally, would be to trail a few steps behind Atlas, but despite its reputation, Goodneighbor’s a pretty safe place for the Railroad, and people like Atlas in particular. Goodneighbor is vigilante justice defined, and the only people Atlas has ever pissed off are people who deserved it. Deacon’s got a lot more shades of gray, but the people who’d have a bone to pick with him normally don’t recognize him the next time he rolls into town.

Even if that _wasn’t_ the case, Hancock’s influence hangs over Goodneighbor even in his physical absence. Hancock’s always liked Deacon alright, but if anyone laid a finger on Atlas, they’d be in a grave before the hour was out. Even before he knew Atlas, Hancock had stabbed Finn, though some of that might have been because Finn had hinted that one day there’d be a new mayor in town. Really, all things considered, that was just downright stupid.

Looking back on it, that was one of the first times Deacon had actually thought Atlas had a chance to thrive in the Commonwealth. Watching from a bench, he saw Atlas’s eyes (Clara, then, still so skinny, Dogmeat by her side) follow Finn to the ground, and briefly Deacon had wondered if there was too much compassion (outrage, too) there for her to make it. Instead, she snapped to attention in front of Hancock, smiled softly, and offered her hand in that antiquated gesture that she still uses to endear herself to the disenchanted people of the wasteland. Hancock had been positively enchanted from the beginning, even before noticing the quirks that sealed the deal: the accent, the stutter, the inability to leave the Pip-Boy radio off for more than thirty-seven seconds at a time.

“N-need a drink before we hit the Memory Den, Deacon?” Atlas jokes, shaking him from his thoughts. Deacon’s feeling a little too close to _nostalgic_ to be comfortable.

“Not unless you’re looking for an excuse, boss.”

Whenever he calls her _boss_ , her cheeks color and her neck blotches, not much, but enough that he can see it peeking out from under the collar of Atlas’s vault suit, right next to the burn scar. Atlas glances down at the band of gold around her finger, briefly (barely a millisecond), then looks back at him and rolls her eyes, bemused.

How often does she still think about her husband, Deacon wonders, and what would her husband think of her palling around with scum like him?

* * *

 

“Absolutely _not._ ”

There are a lot of things Clara has been unsure of since thawing out in Vault 111, but some things haven’t changed, and the passion that made her want to be a lawyer is one of them.

She isn’t even sure who _suggested_ that it would possible to plug Kellogg’s memories _into_ Nick (could she have said it? Clara hopes not.), but she knows that it’s not an option the second the idea is brought to the floor.

“I have to agree. It’s dangerous in even the best scenario, and the ramifications of what could happen if the outcome is less than ideal could be devastating,” Dr. Amari says, and Clara hopes that that will be enough to assuage the bullheadedness she knows that Nick has in spades.

Nick sighs and fiddles with the sleeve of his coat absently, and Clara feels her eyes narrow of their own accord. “Look, kid,” he begins, and Clara wonders if he’s refusing eye contact with her on purpose. “If it takes risking an old bot like me to bring down the Institute, this is a risk I’m willing to take.”

“A-as if!” The words get thick in her mouth as the singing in her throat threatens to spill out of her eyes. “N-Nick, I’d lose my mind if I l-lost you!”

Nick smirks, almost brazenly, and Clara wonders when she stopped realizing that his eyes were _yellow_ , that sometimes his hand got too creaky and he had to oil it. She’s killed raiders, people that were completely flesh and blood, but the thought of Nick, who’s more metal than man on this physical plane, leaving sends her into a tailspin.

“Aw, come on, kid. If you lost me, you’d still have Deacon.”

Clara doesn’t know what to say to that, but she steps forward and grasps Nick’s forearm. “We’ll find another w-way, Nick.”

Nick looks into her eyes then, and Clara wonders if he can hear the somber notes that she feels like she’s leaking at every pore. “You and I both know there isn’t another way, Clara.”

It’s been a long time since someone’s treated her like a daughter, and Clara doesn’t even recognize the behavior until Nick’s consented to letting Dr. Amari poke around the back of his head with a screwdriver. She’s frozen, rooted to the floor, watching someone rifle through the skull of the first person who listened to the tragedy of the Davis family that left only Clara Pedersen behind.

When Deacon’s fingers brush her shoulder blade, Clara starts, decidedly ungraceful. When she recovers, she whips around, thankful that she’s almost exactly Deacon’s match in height. This is unfair, and all the acid in her stomach is boiling, and she doesn’t know what to do with this terror and rage that is storming her insides like a radstorm rolling over Diamond City. Deacon’s nothing wrong, nothing at all, but Clara is overflowing with emotion and at the moment he’s shaped a lot like a _target_ because what he says is, “Look, this isn’t ideal for _anybody_ , Atlas, but the Institute’s bigger than any one person-”

“Ideals are fine and d-d-dandy, Deacon, but Nick is the first person who actually offered to do a-anything to help me in this _fucking_ wasteland where six things almost k-killed me before I made it to somewhere with any s-semblance of civilization!”

Clara doesn’t realize her voice is rising in pitch until it cracks, and her chest heaves. She doesn’t have the words, doesn’t have the fucking _English_ to explain to the only friend she trusts enough to traipse around the Commonwealth with that losing Nick would be like leaving Denmark all over again, that a surrogate parent is the best thing she’s ever going to have because everyone she ever knew died two hundred years ago.

“Kid.”

Nick speaks to her from where Dr. Amari is still operating, and Clara turns to him rapidly, hoping he’s changed his mind. Instead, he says, “It’ll take more than this to kill me. Promise.”

There’s pressure behind Clara’s eyes, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to stop the tears from overflowing when the heaviness in her chest feels like an anchor. She shuts her eyes tightly, a desperate attempt to keep the crying internal that fails when she feels a hand on the side of her face. Clara’s eyes shoot open again, and when she does, the floodgates open; the fear is indescribable, and it’s so _stupid_ that she can’t even see Deacon’s eyes when he’s six inches away from her face.

When the English fails her, she says to Deacon, “ _Jeg ved ikke om jeg kan gøre det._ ”

_I don’t know if I can do this._

The words sound softer in English, like she’s somehow not making a choice that can full well kill her friend in order to find a son who she’s already failed.

Deacon’s hands are still on her face and the tears are rolling down her cheeks, and Deacon says, “Get in there, and get out, and then let’s give the bastards hell.”

Deacon’s hands are so warm and when Clara looks at the pod where she’s supposed to sit it is dark and empty and sinister.

* * *

 

Deacon’s not sure what he expected, but this is not it.

Atlas is falling apart in his hands. Literally, in his hands. Atlas’s eyes open, and they’re beautiful but so goddamn sad. Have they always been that sad, or is it just because she’s more torn up about the very _idea_ of losing Nick Valentine than Deacon’s ever been about putting a bullet through anybody, friend or foe? He’s seen Atlas cry before, back when he was tailing her, but this is the first time he’s been an active participant in the situation.

Nobody cries here. It’s a waste of fluids, and the second someone loses themselves enough to start crying makes them an easy target. This should be a lesson, Deacon thinks briefly, at some dark part in the back of his mind, but Griffin kissed Cecilia’s cheek just this morning, and wouldn’t Griffin protect her a little better than that?

She says something in her gibberish tongue (Danish, Deacon corrects himself), and it’s like they’re frozen in time until Dr. Amari gestures towards the memory pod. Atlas pulls away from him, recoils like he’s venomous, though Deacon that’s mostly a product of the environment rather than his touch alone. Still, she doesn’t remove herself from his grasp fast enough to stop something warm and wet from falling onto his hand.

Atlas climbs into the pod ungracefully, chest still heaving from emotional exertion as well as what Deacon assumes are physical tremors involving keeping her crying at bay. He sets his mouth in a straight line as the pod’s door closes on Atlas, who has her eyes clamped shut again.

“Kid,” Nick says, “Can you hear me?”

“She cannot hear you, Detective,” Dr. Amari interrupts, “Only those with a direct link to the pods can communicate with users.”

Nick scoffs. “Should’ve said bye faster then,” he says, before looking at Deacon as though he wants to say something.

“Are you ready, Detective?” Dr. Amari asks, and Deacon doesn’t think he imagines what he can only describe as _professional fear_ in her voice.

“One sec, doc,” Nick says, and Dr. Amari rattles off the situation to Atlas in the pod. After she’s done, Nick says to Deacon, “She trusts you.”

“Nah,” Deacon says, all apathy when it would hurt too much to be anything else. “She’s smarter than that.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You know the truth, even if you don’t think you do. Point is, if something does happen to me, you’d better use everything at the Railroad’s disposal to help her. I told her I’d see her to the end with her son, and you wouldn’t still be with her if you didn’t think the cause wasn’t worth fighting for.”

“What’re you getting at, Nick?” Deacon says, because even though Nick said _point is_ he doesn’t think Nick’s actually gotten to the point.

“You care for her in some capacity, Deacon, even if all your issues don’t let you recognize it. She’s got no one here. Don’t leave her in the wind.”

Deacon’s loath to make promises, so he says, “What, Valentine, you don’t trust me?” with his best unaffected shrug.

Nick scoffs again, but smirks. “That’s as close to a commitment as I’m ever going to get from you.” Nick nods at Dr. Amari. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Very well,” Dr. Amari says, not a little primly considering there’s a bloodstain on the floor in the corner of the room, “Establishing connection.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back!!! this chapter's a little shorter than the others, but if i'd included the whole memory sequence it was going to be TOO long, so this is what you get for now! xx  
> i had a WONDERFUL holiday, for the few of you who asked in the comments, so this is the least i can give you to make up for my brief absence! hope it was worth the wait. :)   
> [chat with me here on tumblr](http://www.battlemastershepard.tumblr.com) if you want to have a really in depth conversation about how important clara is to me


	20. all you have to do is

Clara wakes to the smell of eggs and bacon, the protein sizzling on a frying pan not far from her bedroom. She yawns, loudly, and from the kitchen, Nate says, “Darlin’? You awake?”

Nate’s question is punctuated with Shaun’s laughter, bubbly and pure. Clara smiles to herself. “Good morning, _elskede_ ,” she says, quietly enough that Nate won’t hear it, because this moment? This moment is bliss.

It’s the day that the bombs fell. Clara wonders if she’ll die this time.

 _“Clara? Clara.”_ Dr. Amari’s voice cuts through Clara’s mind like a knife, and the scene around her flickers like a TV set not tuned quite right. “ _The pod isn’t behaving normally because of the two sets of memories attached to it. I’m having difficulty isolating Kellogg’s from your own. Bear with me, I’ll resolve the issue as quickly as possible._ ”

As soon as Dr. Amari’s voice disappears, the scene resumes. Nate crosses the threshold of the doorway into their bedroom, holding baby Shaun in one arm and a plate of breakfast in his other hand. Clara props herself up on the pillows, marveling at their softness and the way her body doesn’t ache immediately after waking up. Nate puts the food on the nightstand next to the bed, and Clara holds her hands out for Shaun. When Nate obliges, he also swoops in for a kiss, and when his lips linger a little too long, the scene starts flickering all over again.

Clara’s eyes well with tears, and she tries to scream, tries to let loose the rage and hurt; how can she lose them again? How can she live this only to let it fade in front of her? It must be Dr. Amari, fiddling with something in her mind, in Nick’s mind; Clara doesn’t know. Nate and Shaun disappear, and Clara expects to be plunged into Kellogg’s psyche, but when Nate and Shaun flicker out, Deacon comes into focus. “Trust me,” he says, when they’re searching for a way to free Emogene from the Pillars of the Community. Where Nate’s lips had been, Deacon’s replace them, and Clara melts before he and everything around her fades into black.

 _“Apologies for the difficulty, particularly at the end,”_ comes Dr. Amari’s voice again, and even if Clara spoke, articulated the pain, she doesn’t know if Dr. Amari could hear her. “ _I seem to have ironed out the issue_.”

This is all neurological, a figment, really, a forced reliving of something she’s already experienced, and yet Deacon’s taste still lingers on her tongue, cigarettes and rifle grease. Clara doesn’t even know if any of it is real.

* * *

 

Deacon’s been in the memory pods before himself, especially when he was at his weakest, right after the Deathclaws had found Barbara. There was an addictive nature to them, even; it was all too easy to slip into a memory of a better time and just… never leave. The second that Atlas connects to the pod, her breathing becomes less labored and her body language relaxes.

He’s watched people reliving their lives this way, but Deacon hasn’t always _seen_ them, per se. Atlas’s physiological response is dramatic, and he can’t tear his eyes away from the roller-coaster that she’s on. He can’t figure out why she’s having such a powerful response to someone like _Kellogg’s_ memories when Dr. Amari says, “ _Shit._ ”

“Doc?” Deacon says, eyes still trained nervously on Atlas.

Dr. Amari doesn’t answer him, instead speaking directly to Atlas. “Clara? Clara,” she says, voice not betraying how frantic her body language communicates that she is. The pod isn’t behaving normally because of the two sets of memories attached to it. I’m having difficulty isolating Kellogg’s from your own. Bear with me, I’ll resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

Dr. Amari logs into a terminal near the pod, and Deacon tries not to look at Nick’s limp body, slumped over. His eyes stay trained on Atlas, whose mouth opens in what looks like joy before tears squeak out even in her induced sleep, and Deacon wonders what she is seeing before he can stop himself.

“I’m stepping upstairs for a smoke, doc. Call if you need me.”

Dr. Amari doesn’t answer him, and Deacon doesn’t expect her to. She’s one hundred percent invested in getting Atlas out of whatever trouble she’s gotten herself into this time.

Deacon wonders what Atlas saw that made her smile and cry all at once, wonders if her husband would have been able to make that better. He wonders a little if maybe it was her husband’s fault.

He wonders why he wasn’t able to stay in that room for a minute longer.

Lighting the smoke, Deacon exhales before putting it to his lips. It’s weird, having a partner; Atlas is hardly somebody he just paired up with for a mission or two at this point. He might actually miss her if he bugged out. How strange.

The cigarette’s barely in his mouth when Irma flits into his line of vision, and Deacon offers her a smirk. “What brought you back to this side of town, sweet thing?” Irma asks, like they aren’t both aging by the moment. Deacon plays along anyway.

“What brings a guy like me anywhere, Irma?” Deacon breathes out a puff of smoke, and he has to admit that he doesn’t know to what extent Irma is aware of the Railroad’s investment in the Memory Den. She has to know _something_. Irma and Dr. Amari run this place together; it’d be impossible to keep it from her for anything longer than a temporary arrangement. “A pretty girl brought a guy like me back here.”

Irma chuckles but leaves him to his thoughts, and when Deacon’s done with his cigarette, he thinks about stamping it under his boot dramatically. Dr. Amari’d have his head if the place went up in flames, though, so he tosses the cigarette out the window, checking to make sure it hits dusty ground and nothing else before descending once again, willfully pushing the sight of Atlas’s body convulsing in sobs from his mind.

-

She’s not supposed to care, not supposed to feel for Kellogg, not supposed to project Shaun on that little body in the crib that a younger Kellogg peers into almost _fondly_. Clara didn’t murder and mutilate a _man_. Kellogg was a monster by the time her knife tore into him, once, twice, a million times. Every time Dr. Amari rips her out of a memory, Clara sighs in ecstatic relief.

Despite being as far from the physical plane as possible, the nausea that overwhelms Clara is all too real. Kellogg and a scientist walk down the aisle between the pods in the vault, the scientist detachedly pointing Kellogg towards, “the one at the end of the hall.”

Clara forces her eyes shut, refusing to watch Nate manifest as alive in front of her, even as a figment of Kellogg’s memory. “Is it over?” Nate’s voice has all the nuances Clara knows like the back of her hand. “Are we okay?”

The seconds drag on, and finally Nate says, “I’m not letting you take Shaun!” before Kellogg’s pistol rings out in the enclosed space.

* * *

 

“I’m, uh…” Deacon comes back down the stairs just in time to hear Dr. Amari say, “I’m sorry you had to go through that again.”

One look at the pod tells Deacon that this venture probably isn’t going quite as smoothly as he and Atlas had hoped. Tears are squeezing out from the corners of her eyes, clamped shut, and her lips are quivering.

Nick Valentine’s body sits limp and lifeless in a chair adjacent to the pod, and the thought crosses Deacon’s mind that he doesn’t know how the universe could justify taking Nick Valentine and Atlas from the Commonwealth and letting him continue to walk it.

* * *

 

And, projecting herself across neurons, Clara finds herself in a sparsely decorated room, Kellogg relaxing in a chair too rickety and a boy who is young but not quite young enough sitting in front of a television.

She dissociates. Clara knows the truth before the synth flashes into the room like a goddamn superhero, and all she can hear is her father on repeat in her head, repeat after repeat that feels like a coda signaling that a song is about to end.

_The Americans bring destruction everywhere they go._

Her father said it centuries ago, and is this even really America anymore?

When the synth speaks, his voice is buttery, but she can’t process the words, save one.

 _Shaun_.

The synth doesn’t say it as its own sentence, but it’s all Clara can digest before her insides crumble, like every wrong note on a piano played all at once.

* * *

 

Atlas’s body quakes so dramatically that Deacon thinks the pod might split in two.

She had never stopped crying, and maybe Deacon is delusional or there’s glare on the sunglasses from the lights that shine down from the ceiling, but the tears seem to be flowing freer now, and Dr. Amari, perhaps the most intelligent, non-Institute affiliated person in the Commonwealth, says, “Of course!”

The epiphany is ill-timed and Deacon should care more about whatever earthshattering revelation the doctor has pieced together, but Griffin is ready to stick a fist through the glass and pull Cecilia out through the pod’s remains. Atlas’s breath is coming in sharp, shallow spurts, and her chest is heaving wildly with every effort.

Afterwards, Deacon will regret that he hadn’t spared a thought for Nick Valentine, cords running out of his brain, but Deacon says, “Doc, pull her out.”

“Teleportation,” Dr. Amari says in wonder, “No wonder we’ve never been able to find an entrance. There isn’t one.”

“Doc!” Deacon says, and he doesn’t really think he’s raised his voice too much but Dr. Amari starts with a jump nonetheless. “Pull her out.”

The pod’s _shhh_ noise as it creaks open is enough to disguise Deacon’s sigh of relief when Atlas’s breathing becomes a little less labored. The tears are still coming (what did she _see_?), but at least there’s less fear of hyperventilation. Her eyes stay shut, like she’s scared to open them, and Atlas’s fingers grip the cushion in the pod as tightly as possible.

“Atlas,” Deacon says, softly; he deals in secrets and he doesn’t think this is going to be one of them, but if Dr. Amari doesn’t hear him, that’s fine. “You’re okay.”

Her eyes flutter open, still sad, cheeks wet, and Atlas’s mouth creaks open before shuttering shut again. When she speaks, finally: “My son… my son…”

Dr. Amari has finished bringing Nick back to life when Atlas gropes blindly for Deacon’s forearm, like she’s desperate for human contact. Her hands are clammy and it contrasts disgustingly with her wedding ring, but the words she speaks are so close to a eulogy that Deacon doesn’t have time to digest the sensory nastiness.

“My son is almost a teenager.”

She doesn’t speak again, but Deacon watches Atlas’s face crack, and she just keeps crying like she isn’t even considering what an enormous amount of resources she’s wasting. Her hand never leaves his arm, even when Dr. Amari finally seems to realize that Atlas has woken up.

As Atlas tries to stand, Dr. Amari says, “Slow movements, okay? No one’s ever done this before.”

Nick has gone upstairs, seeming a little out of his own body (and it’s hard to blame him), and Atlas is still crying when she asks, “Is Nick okay?”

“Think he just needed to step out for a moment. It was kind of a trip for him too, boss.”

Atlas nods, but some semblance of relief washes over her face, like at least one worry has been dealt with for the moment.

“Are you ready to talk about what happened in there?” Dr. Amari asks, but she’s treading lightly. Atlas is just wounded enough to respond accordingly.

”Sure, my son is ten years too old, no big deal,” Atlas says, voice bordering on hysteria.

“Yes,” Dr. Amari says, kind but a little impatient, “But now we know the Institute’s secret – teleportation. All we have to figure out now is _how_.”

It’s not that long ago that Deacon told Atlas that finding the Institute was more important than any one person, but as she desperately tries to pull herself together to have an adult conversation about the logistics of finding the rogue scientist Virgil, Deacon wonders if he even really believes it.

* * *

 

She and Deacon leave the Memory Den in near silence. Clara’s glad Nick is okay, and tells him so as they pass him by, but it’s hard to focus on anything except the fact that Shaun has learned to walk, talk, and get dressed without her even being a speck on the horizon.

The ring burns. It burns like a brand, a reminder of what’s been stolen, a reminder that somehow she had managed to delude herself that even though Nate was gone, things could still be something _like they were_ with Shaun.

Clara’s vision clouds, and Deacon’s at her peripherals, but she can feel the hot tears bubbling up again, the pressure in her gut expanding. She had worked so hard – murdered a _murderer_ – and now Dr. Amari had given her more work again.

_Find Virgil, and maybe he can get you to your son._

She still wants Shaun back. There’s no denying that, no way to replace the feeling of emptiness she has whenever she remembers that he was supposed to be a baby in her arms.

It’s foolhardy, though, to think everything will go back to the way it was.

Clara raises her left hand and wrenches the wedding band off her finger. It feels like it’s welded to the skin, like it might take eternities to come off, but it does. There’s no fanfare when Clara lets it drop on Goodneighbor’s dusty street. She expects there to be a clang or a crash, but there’s nothing, and she won’t throw away Nate’s ring from where it rests still in her pocket but there are no delusions now.

This is the Commonwealth. It’s not Massachusetts. Things ever going back to normal was a fantasy of the highest order, and Clara doesn’t look back on the ring when she and Deacon walk towards the Hotel Rexford to finally get some rest.

* * *

 

Atlas drops the ring in the dirt like it’s pocket lint, and Deacon’s heart aches and swells like it can’t decide if it wants to shrivel or burst. She doesn’t give the band a second glance as she walks back towards the hotel, but Deacon swings down and scoops it up.

He hopes no one asks him why he’s holding on to it, if they ever find out. He doesn’t know if he has an answer.

It doesn’t matter how great her Nate was. He didn’t deserve Atlas anyway.

Who could deserve her?

Deacon feels sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here, queer, and decidedly not dead!!!
> 
> i've already given you every excuse in the book so just know i apologize!!   
> xx
> 
> ps: full disclosure - bethesda didn't bother resolving nick valentine as super fucked up kellogg host and honestly i want this story to end someday so i'm sorry if i let you down by not including it


	21. wishin' that i was your bottle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so fucking sorry

Hollow is such an ugly word, but when Clara wakes, it is the song settled deep in her stomach, off-key notes plinking in an empty chapel. Sleep had brought no dreams, just a brief blackness that was only delaying the inevitable. She expects her cheeks to be wet, but when she sits up in bed at the Hotel Rexford and glances over to make sure Deacon is still there, Clara doesn’t even feel the desire to cry.

All she is is hollow.

The spot on her finger where her wedding ring had been feels cool; Clara isn’t used to missing it, and between that and her hair falling down all around her face, she feels like a bit of a mess. She reaches for the rubber band wrapped around her wrist and begins to pull her hair to the side to pull it back in the ponytail that replaced her too-strict, lawyer-like bun.

Clara doesn’t know if it’s simply from the stress of pulling the rubber band too hard or if maybe the damn thing has gotten old, but the second she twists it once around her hair, it snaps.

Deacon rockets awake at the sound, reaching for the knife Clara knows he always has under a pillow when he sleeps.

“Sorry, Deacon,” Clara says softly, “My hairband broke.”

It feels like yet another eulogy.

* * *

 

The Cabots pay them more than handsomely for Lucy and Jackson’s hard work, but it isn’t going to be enough. The amount of Rad-X and RadAway that Dr. Amari thought would be even _minimal_ for a trip to the Glowing Sea was about ten times what Atlas and Deacon had at their disposal.

“The Railroad always has some stocked,” Deacon says when Atlas brings up their lack of resources, “but we’ve been a little tight after, y’know, the Switchboard was more or less wiped off the map.”

It’s Deacon-speak for, “We _could_ ask the Railroad, but we’re _definitely_ still going to have to pay.” Making the pitch for so many post-nuclear apocalypse necessities when the Railroad is trying to move synths while severely understaffed was – well, not foolhardy, but certainly not realistic.

That morning, when the hairband snapped, Deacon had thought his age was catching up with him, shooting up like he was verging on a heart attack. Atlas hadn’t reacted to him at a first (a testament to her probably being a little too comfortable with him), but when her gaze finally landed on him, her words were like ones that would be spoken at a proper, pre-bomb funeral.

“Sorry, Deacon. My hairband broke.”

In her waking moments, Deacon has never seen Atlas’s hair down around her shoulders for longer than 27 seconds. The second she wakes it is away from her face, sad eyes on display for all the world to see, like some kind of Diamond City woman who thinks she’s flirting with nobility. Hair in this world, roughing it like they do, lucky to get a shower every few days? It’s too greasy to be beautiful, too sunbleached and oily to possibly run one’s fingers through.

And yet.

_And yet._

Atlas is still soft, he thinks, underneath it all, if he scrubbed away the layers of violence she’s committed with him, but no one would know that from the way she pulls her sidearm and blows a radroach’s head off before it has a chance to even entertain jumping them.

He hasn’t asked her if she has a plan. She hasn’t asked him either. They’re both a little too willing to give up the reins at any given time to one another, and as they wander away, seemingly aimlessly, from the Cabot House, Deacon wonders if they’re walking in the direction of Sanctuary intentionally or if they each think the other is leading.

“Sanctuary probably has some supplies stockpiled,” Atlas says, suddenly, and a less experienced partner might have been shocked by the silence between them suddenly breaking. “I’d like to see Amelia anyway.”

Deacon half-smiles at her. The band of gold in his pocket burns.

* * *

 

Nadia’s a sweet girl. She’d taken about forty seconds to get past Amelia’s ghoul-y skin, which put her in roughly the 95th percentile for acceptance. She had been a little on edge around Hancock, but once Amelia hears Nadia’s history with jet, it’s very clear that it isn’t the “ghoul” part of him that is disconcerting.   
  
The day Clara and Deacon had left Sanctuary, Clara hadn’t exactly told Amelia to keep an eye on her, but Amelia had always felt she should try to take care of Clara back before the war. She’d been so young and so naïve, sad without even understanding why she was sad.

Nadia isn’t naïve, but she’s younger than Clara was when Amelia had first met her. Being alive so long has warped Amelia’s sense of age, but Nadia can’t be more than 21.

Regardless, if anyone in Sanctuary wanted to get the better of Nadia, they were going to have to go through Amelia first, and she wasn’t _quite_ a Hancock, but anything she couldn’t handle herself, Hancock would definitely take care of for her.

They bunk next to each other, and Preston lets them work with one another through the day, every day. If Nadia dislikes the arrangement, she never says a word on the matter.

In another world, one where the nuclear bombs hadn’t fallen and Amelia hadn’t been married to a man with too heavy a penchant for beer, Amelia wonders what Nadia’s role in her life might have played.

Sanctuary really is a pretty boring place to live. Having her around makes it a little less so. Still, boring isn’t a criticism; it’s safe. Safety is worth more than just about anything.

Things are a little less boring the afternoon that Deacon and Clara roll back into town. She and Nadia are feeding brahmin, a little slower than they probably should because as soon as they finish up with that they have to move on to planting corn, and, as Nadia says holding up nails that are bit down to the cuticle, “It will ruin our manicures!”

Today, though, Amelia is granted at least a brief reprieve from such a fate when Clara’s voice carries across half of Sanctuary. “Lia!” Amelia hears it almost as if it’s on the wind, and looking over, she finds Clara sandwiched between Deacon, a sniper rifle strapped to his back, and Dogmeat, doing everything in his power to attract Clara’s attention for even a second more.

Seeing Clara is a relief, though when their eyes meet there is a hopelessness in them that Amelia hadn’t seen before. When Clara is finally in front of her, she collapses in Amelia’s arms, and Amelia isn’t sure if it’s exhaustion or something much darker.

“Can I talk to you?” Clara asks, and it’s amazing how the stutter has disappeared, how she doesn’t sound quite native but she’s so close to it.

Amelia looks to the brahmin, Nadia finishing up the work they started, and says, “We still have a lot of work to do for the day. I don’t think Preston would appreciate it-”

Nadia cuts her off. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

“By yourself?” Amelia is not a little incredulous.

“Oh, of course not,” Deacon says. “I’m sure I can dig up somebody to do a little manual labor.”

There’s a wink in his voice but the sunglasses mask his eyes. Clara leads Amelia to her old pre-war home, Dogmeat trailing at their heels.

* * *

 

“So what exactly… do you two do?” Nadia asks, like old-world small talk.

“Well,” Deacon starts, drawing out the vowel and stalling for time, “When we aren’t cattle rustlin’ or infiltrating weird cults that take advantage of young girls, Atlas is mostly pulling my ass out of fires I start myself.”

Nadia snorts. “Can’t say I’m surprised. She seems the more capable of you two.”

It doesn’t escape Nadia’s notice that he didn’t even flirt with answering her question, but there are bigger things to worry about than his relationship with honesty. After a brief pause, she asks, “Is Clara okay?”

“What makes you think she’s not?” Deacon asks, as aloof as possible.

“She didn’t even say hello to me.”

Deacon sighs, and his hands stop working for the briefest of moments. “It’s been a rough couple of days for Atlas.”

* * *

 

By the time Clara has related her tale in its entirety, she has an entirely new appreciation for how a frog must feel, stuck in sunlight and too far from any source of water. She is dehydrated and dissociated and _dry_. There is nothing left in her that she can muster up to cry.

When she finishes, Nadia is silent for just a second before asking, “Where’s your ring?”

Clara was wrong. She still has enough fluids left to cry, if only for just a little while longer.

“Clara.” Amelia’s words aren’t scolding, but they’re close enough that another sob wracks Clara’s body. “Nate is gone. You knew that. Moving on isn’t going to change the reality.”

“Then why even _ask_?” Clara snaps, lashing out at Amelia for a question that had absolutely no discernible purpose except to dig a knife into an already infected and unhealable wound.

Amelia makes a face that looks like she’s trying to purse her lips, except her lips are long gone, and it takes every bit of Clara’s emotional restraint to keep from dissolving in hysterical, grief-stricken giggles.

“I asked because it might not make up all the difference, but a ring like that could go for some decent caps,” Amelia says, crossing her arms. “I _know_ what a wedding band means, but if it’s between holding on to an outdated symbol and finding your living son, I don’t really think it’s much of a choice.”

The color drains from Clara’s face, and her hand pulls Nate’s ring from her pocket unbidden.

“Good, you still have it. Then-”

“No.” Clara interrupts Amelia in a steely voice. “This is Nate’s.”

“Then where’s yours?” Amelia asks, and it’s an innocent question, but for not the first or last time in the last 48 hours, Clara wishes desperately that she had been victim of the nuclear holocaust.

“I threw it away.”

“You threw-” Amelia stops and sighs before shaking her head.

“I threw it away because it felt like hanging on to an impossible dream. You don’t have to tell me it was s-stupid. I know.”

Amelia exhales once more before drawing Clara in for a hug. “I know it’s even harder because it’s his, but that thing could bring in a couple hundred caps that could make a serious difference. Whether you’re able to do it is another story, but if it helps you find Shaun, isn’t it worth it?”

Clara chokes out yet another of innumerable sobs, and Amelia’s arms tighten around her. The tears come harder and faster, and Clara thinks maybe she isn’t crying about selling Nate’s ring so much as she is feeling sorry for herself not having the foresight to realize that that stupid ring she left in the dust in Goodneighbor might have doubled the amount of Rad-X in her backpack.

* * *

 

Atlas and Amelia are gone for what feels like an eternity. It feels like an eternity because Deacon would rather be anywhere in the wasteland than planting corn. That’s not an issue with Sanctuary. It’s an issue with farming. He is not cut out for a career in agriculture.

Deacon’s already resolved to tell Atlas that she probably shouldn’t blow off Nadia, but it’s a non-issue. When she sees Nadia again, a wide smile sweeps across her face. It’s not quite real, but close enough that it fools Nadia, who returns it in kind.

“I like your hair,” Nadia says, and it’s just polite, but the tears that well up in Atlas’s eyes are real despite the fact that she blinks them away in less than a millisecond.

“They’re f-feeding you enough, right?” Atlas says with a chuckle, deflecting from the hair thing as deftly as possible. It’s a far leap from where she’d started in the Commonwealth, certainly, and Atlas is bounds from who she was when she emerged from the vault so many days ago.

Like a response to her question, a bell rings, and Deacon thinks he sees Nadia almost start salivating. It’s some fucked up stuff that seems a little too close to conditioning for Deacon’s taste, but they seem happy, even if it’s not his style.

Atlas sits next to him at dinner and plays all the right roles, flirting with Hancock and reassuring Nadia and pretending Amelia isn’t watching over her like some sort of guardian with too-black eyes. It lasts about an hour before Deacon whispers, “You done playing, boss?”

“Playing?” She responds to him without a pause, smirking at Nadia for good measure.

“You’re not as good as me yet.”

“Really? Thought I was doing a damn good j-job.”

He chuckles. “You are. They’re eating out of your hand. I just see a little better than most people.”

She smiles. And that one is real, and for him.

When the crowd finally disperses, Atlas lingers and Deacon lingers with her, a sentient shadow. When Preston tells her that they have a place for her whenever she wants to sleep, Atlas shakes her head.

“I’ll stay at home,” she says, and when Preston leaves, Atlas turns to Deacon and says, “I don’t think you saw, but I threw my wedding ring away in Goodneighbor. I’m going to sell my husband’s and that’ll put us a little closer to what we need, and that together with what little they’ve scrounged up and can afford to give away from here will put us in a good spot. Should only n-need to do a job or two before we hit the Glowing Sea.”

For the first time in a long time, Deacon’s breath catches in his throat, and something close to guilt tickles his stomach.

It’s uncharacteristically impulsive when he speaks, a total Glory move, but he says, “You don’t have to sell his ring if you don’t want,” before he can stop himself.

Atlas rolls her eyes. “Come o-on. You’re a cynic at the worst of times and too practical at best. You know it’s the smart thing to do.”

Deacon rubs the back of his neck and braces himself. “No, I mean… You don’t have to sell _his_ ring.”

He withdraws the other ring from his pocket, Atlas’s ring, and her expression reels accordingly; revulsion, relief, and rage all flash across her face in turn.

“Why do you have that.”

There’s no question mark when she asks, but Deacon doesn’t know if he has an answer anyway. She snatches the ring from his outstretched palm, and he closes his eyes to fish for a response.

“I just didn’t want you to regret giving it up. I wasn’t really planning on telling you. Romantic stuff isn’t my game.”

He opens his eyes and watches her loom closer, but where he expects a slap, she wraps her arms around his neck and plants her lips on his with all the force of a hurricane.

Deacon can taste her, breathe her in, and every alarm in his head rings out at an excruciating volume. This isn’t Griffin and Cecilia. He doesn’t know if it ever was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to laurenhobbes, the real mvp, who commented on this fic even tho i hadn't updated it in millennia and brought me back around to what really matters - projecting my flaws onto the characters i love. thank you, truly, and thank everyone here for all their kind words. i hope to be more consistent in the future for you all x


	22. out of a broken place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is short but i swear to god it was like pulling teeth

She had tasted like salt, Deacon muses as he lies awake later, alone in bed. He briefly wonders if that was something about her naturally before remembering that she’d started crying while they’d kissed, which isn’t a resounding review of his skill, but given the context he supposed he didn’t really blame Atlas.

When they pulled away from each other, Atlas really hadn’t looked sad. She mostly just looked scared.

So he’d wound up here, in Atlas’s dilapidated, pre-war home, in a room that he suspects was a guest bedroom once. Deacon’s pretending that he can’t hear Atlas crying two rooms down.

He thinks that she felt better on his mouth when they were Deacon and Atlas than she had when they were Griffin and Cecilia. Deacon doesn’t know what that means, and he doesn’t plan to unpack it at the moment.

Dogmeat pads into the room, no doubt granted entry to the house via the makeshift dog door that Atlas had proudly informed him that she had installed _personally_ so that Dogmeat could come and go as he pleased. Atlas’s face had lit up like a tacky neon sign.

Deacon rolls his eyes, mostly at himself for having the thought in the first place and less so at how endearing the instance itself had been.

Dogmeat pads over to where Deacon’s hand is lolled lazily over the side of the bed and licks it twice before looking straight into Deacon’s face and letting out the most pathetic whine that Deacon has ever heard in his life.

“What?” Deacon asks and raises an eyebrow. Dogmeat appears to take this as confirmation that Deacon will help him out with whatever issue a dog of his stature could have and thus turns accordingly and leaves the room. Deacon sighs and slides out of the bed, following the dog down the hall. The door where the dog sits down and looks up to Deacon impatiently is the one Atlas is behind.

He does a quick analysis of the situation. Deacon can’t hear crying coming from within, which means Atlas has either cried herself to sleep from emotional whiplash, or she has transcended tears and reached a state of apathetic nirvana.

Deacon looks down at Dogmeat, and he swears he sees the dog’s eyes narrow angrily, like he can tell that Deacon doesn’t want to open the door. Throwing his hands up in surrender, Deacon whispers, “Alright, alright. But all lip-locking aside, I’m 97% sure I’m on thin ice with her still about the ring thing, so if this goes bad, it’s on you.”

Deacon very desperately wants Atlas to be asleep. He doesn’t really think she’s mad at him, but he can understand that there’s probably a whirlwind of emotion she’s going through regarding both the return of her wedding ring as well as the _manner_ of the wedding ring’s return, and Deacon isn’t going to speak for her but Atlas also seems like the kind of girl who would see any level of romantic relations as a betrayal to even a dead husband.

And yet, despite all that, Deacon closes his eyes in defeat and reaches for the doorknob, because he’s pretty sure that Atlas’s love for this dog will outweigh whatever negativity that may come from him disturbing her and what little peace of mind she may have come into. He turns the knob as slowly as possible, painfully aware of the fact that everything sounds twelve times louder when a person needs for things to be quiet, and eventually opens the door with a _creak_ that sounds to him like it could be heard in Diamond City.

Atlas is asleep.

The mattress is, for lack of a better word, gross, much like the one that she’s afforded Deacon if he wanted to stay in her house instead of general Sanctuary housing. If he had to guess, he’d say Atlas’s budget went to everyone else’s beds and the ones here were the last priority considering how little she’s in Sanctuary anyway.

Dogmeat’s tail wags like it’s generating wind power and he bounds up onto the foot of Atlas’s bed, sliding the single blanket just slightly from her sleeping form. Deacon leaves before he’s unable to stop thinking about the way her bare upper thigh looks in contrast to the dingy and disgusting nature of literally just about everything else in the Commonwealth.

* * *

Clara wakes exhausted, feeling a little like she did the time she lost her virginity to Frederikke Sarsgaard in the changing room after gym class. She smiles softly at the memory; teachers had thought separating girls and boys would encourage focus, but it hadn’t really worked out that way.

Clara’s lips ache, and she tries not to think about how Deacon and Griffin taste exactly the same but she was significantly happier when it was Deacon who was kissing her.

There’s someone singing in the back of her head – “ _Why can’t you be together_?” – and an image of Nate flashes unbidden into her mind like a brand, followed by teenage Shaun. There’s too much at stake and she’s still grieving, but –

“Atlas?” Deacon knocks at the door, and Dogmeat barks loudly. How had the dog even gotten in here? Clara was sure she’d shut the door to this room.

“A minute, Deacon,” Clara says, sliding quickly into her vault suit and boots before opening the door. She makes a motion to start tying her hair up as she falls into step with Deacon before remembering that the hairband is gone, and her arms fall limp to her sides.

“What’s the plan, boss?” Deacon asks, and Clara almost audibly releases a relieved sigh. He’s not going to make it weird after the kiss, so crying herself to sleep worrying that he wouldn’t want to be her partner anymore was ridiculous.

It sounds really high school when she puts it like that, but _c’est la vie_ , she supposes. “We can head back to Diamond City or Goodneighbor and sell the rings. Can’t imagine anyone in S-Sanctuary is going to have the caps to move them the way that we need. After we figure out how much more we need for supplies, we can go from there.”

Before they head out, of course, Clara checks in with Preston about any Rad-X or RadAway they might have on hand that they can spare, and he’s quick to exceed expectations, as per usual.

“Your friend Nadia has…” Preston pauses as he pushes open the door to a glorified storage closet, revealing significant amounts of everything that Deacon and Clara need. “She’s got sticky fingers, I guess we’ll say. She hasn’t stolen anything since she got here as far as we know, but she must have picked over the Pillars of the Community pretty good before you brought her here.”

On their way out of Sanctuary, Clara holds Nadia in her arms for a second or two longer than she needs to out of gratitude. “You s-stuck it to Brother Thomas good, huh?”

Nadia blushes. “Wasn’t about sticking it to anybody. Just… didn’t know if you were going to come through on your offer of a safe place. Wanted to be prepared just in case.”

“Anyone would have done the same,” Amelia says reassuringly, taking her place in the hug once Clara releases Nadia.

“You’re going to get your son back,” Amelia whispers, only for her to hear, and Clara nods, trying to feel resolute when reality seems hopeless.

Clara pulls back and smiles at Nadia and Amelia both. “Should probably get going before we lose more d-daylight. Good luck.”

* * *

 

Amelia pretends she isn’t at all affected by the sight of Clara leaving Sanctuary again, the only friend she has that has any idea what life on this earth used to be like. Nadia must sense her melancholy somehow anyway, because a soft hand finds her deteriorated one and squeezes it hard.

* * *

 

“Um.” The sound is out of Clara’s mouth before she can stop it, and Clara winces, hoping it isn’t visible. She and Deacon are walking side by side and it’s been quieter than usual, and Clara isn’t really _worried_ , per se, but she doesn’t like that he’s not spinning her some story or lying to her face. “Are we… cool?”

Deacon raises an eyebrow at her but doesn’t stop walking. “Like, you waking up from a frozen sleep after two hundred years cool?”

Clara lets out a laugh she didn’t realize she had in here. They’re fine. Thank whatever being up above, they are fine. She doesn’t know what they are, and she also knows Deacon is a lot like a deer in the headlights even at the best of times. He hasn’t run out on her yet, but she knows this world enough to know that self-preservation comes before anything else.

It wasn’t the first time she kissed him, but somehow she thinks that Deacon tastes better every time.

But she won’t bring it up if he doesn’t bring it up. She can do that much. Deacon’s still her best friend here (except Dogmeat, she muses). Dream Nate had told her to move on but it isn’t that easy anyway. How could she even entertain the idea when the very notion of selling Nate’s ring had had her nearly comatose?

It’s like they never kissed. It’s for the best. She’s got to find Shaun, and Deacon’s got his crusade.

They never kissed. Clara deflates without even knowing how her heart had billowed, but she knows better. She’s not some little girl. She graduated from the University of Copenhagen.

Figuring out what she wants from Deacon ( _another kiss_ , a traitorous soprano vocalizes from the back of her mind) can wait until after she gets her life in order. Or something.

What kind of mother is she if she can’t put aside feeling like she belongs with Deacon as opposed to next to him for the sake of her own son?

Clara swallows hard. Why does that hurt? Why does putting her son first and respecting Nate’s memory hurt?

Hell, the Nate thing almost feels like a soft excuse at this point. She shakes her head, and she must slow her gait just slightly, because the moment that Deacon pulls ahead of her, he stops and looks back.

“You alright, boss?”

Clara chews her lip and sighs before mustering a face-splitting smile. “Never better. What do you say we hit D-Diamond City and then drop by and see if the Cabots have more work for us?”

“You’re the man with the plan,” Deacon says, and it sounds like he’s winking, but Clara can never tell behind his sunglasses.

So they walk. And they walk. And they walk. Clara’s thighs stretch the spandex of the vault suit; the material strains. When she had gotten the vault suit the first time, it had hung off her like Grecian drapery of an outfit. In another time, Clara might have been worried about her weight, but that seems a little too, well, fucked up for this world. She’s no wastelander, but Clara’s stronger than she’s ever been before. That’s not arrogance or aggrandizement. Her mind still works in kilometers, but she walks miles a day, and Deacon will always be better than her but she’s a pretty good shot. Clara’s got people to take care of and there are people that take care of her, and in the best of times or the worst of times, Deacon has had her back for it all.

She wishes Nate could see it. He never will, obviously, but it doesn’t stop her from wishing. It doesn’t matter that she knows better when the guilt still gnaws away at her gut, but…

It’s a start, Clara supposes, especially as she is coming to the realization that she belongs in this cruel reality more than she ever belonged in pre-war America. Nate never liked that any friend of hers was a “threat,” gender unimportant, and he always wanted a housewife, that law degree be damned. No amount of love for him will erase the ugly parts, even though the ugly feels much further away when all she has left of Nate is memories and a run-down, empty home. It’s not like she even has Shaun to remember him by for the moment.

Deacon’s decked out like an umpire, and Clara stifles the eye-roll that feels almost instinctive when she remembers meeting him as Marcus for the first time. They stand in front of the Diamond City gates, and Danny takes one look at how Deacon is dressed and allows them entry.

They’re going to get Shaun back. In that, Clara is steadfast. He’s only a teenager and there’s plenty of his life left to be his mom. Everything else will follow, Deacon included.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /dabs/
> 
> i make no promises i'm sorry


	23. my speed of light

Diamond City is nice and all, but Deacon has other places he’d rather be. For all its faults, though, it is easy to blend in. The problem with that is that it’s completely counteracted by the infectious paranoia that runs rampant across the Commonwealth and especially so here. When Atlas tells him her plan, it is deceptively simple; they buy out every vendor they can in Diamond City that carries Rad-X and RadAway, leave and do whatever work that the Cabots can scrounge up for them, and then return to Diamond City and relieve the vendors of their wares yet again.

Atlas doesn’t mention selling the ring, and Deacon doesn’t ask. They don’t have the funds to buy what she plans to get on the first trip if she doesn’t, so he’s pretty sure that it must still remain on the agenda.

Before they find themselves anywhere, though, Atlas makes a beeline for the Valentine Detective Agency. Deacon smiles, behind her so she can’t see it, and stays on her heels.

* * *

 

Clara almost bursts through the door before remembering how fond Ellie had been of her knocking, and straightens up before rapping on the door a few times. Predictably, Ellie is the one that answers the door, and when she sees Clara, she smiles. “Thank you,” she says, and wraps Clara in her arms before inviting them in. Clara’s eyes widen in alarm at the affection (though it’s far from unwelcome), and before stepping through the threshold, she questions it.

“For what?” Clara asks.

Ellie shakes her head. “No one can stop Nick from doing something once he puts his mind to it. He told me you tried to stop him from… whatever happened with Dr. Amari. He takes my worrying for granted. Thank you for showing him that I’m not the only one who cares about him.”

Clara isn’t sure what to say to that, but thankfully Ellie steps aside to allow her and Deacon entrance. Nick doesn’t stand for them, but he does manage a smile and a glance away from the terminal that he’s using. “Long time no see, kid. Deacon.”

“We won’t bother you too long, Nick. Just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Clara says, and he really does seem fine, and she is so, _so_ thankful for it.

“I’m better now that Ellie lets me out to work again,” Nick says with a chuckle in his voice, and were he not so visibly mechanical, it would feel exactly like family standing here with Nick and Ellie and Deacon.

Ellie watches them leave, standing in the doorway until they round a corner and Clara can’t see her behind them anymore. A weight that Clara didn’t even know she was carrying is lifted from her shoulders, and everything feels lighter.

A haze lifts, and Clara’s guilt over everything suddenly feels so clear. She’s not guilty over Nate, over liking it every time Deacon draws too near. Clara feels guilty for not feeling guilty about it anymore.

The realization feels like an exhalation, and when she remembers the two wedding rings nestled in the bottom of her pocket, it is suddenly all too clear what her options are. The guilt won’t go away, and she knows that, but there’s no reason to let it feed on itself when she can fight it off in even the smallest ways.

The Chem-I-Care is kind of grubby even by post-apocalypse standards, and when Clara says that it’s her first stop, Deacon nods. “Makes sense. I’ll go grab us something at Power Noodles and you can meet me there.”

Clara looks to him in confusion. “Isn’t Power Noodles a little expensive if we’re here to buy out-”

Deacon cuts her off with a shake of his head. “Takahashi owes me a favor. Don’t you think you’ve earned it?”

It’s impossible to be sure, but Clara is sure if he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, she’d see him give her a wink. She flushes just slightly at the expectation, but he’s already turned and headed to the center of town.

Solomon smiles at her when she steps into the Chem-I-Care, and it doesn’t even feel smarmy. She returns it in kind and asks, “How much Rad-X and RadAway do you have?”

“How much do you want?” he asks back, a question for a question.

Clara swallows hard and reaches into her pocket and grabs the bands – both of them – before she can think better of it and places them on the counter. “I don’t know how much I can get for the two of these but I’ll take everything you’re willing to give me for these and another hundred and fifty caps.”

Solomon takes one of them between his thumb and index finger, and Clara pretends not to notice when the tears prick at her eyes. He rubs his chin in thought but doesn’t put the ring down. “I can give you 200 for each of them, 400 total. That’s ten Rad-x or five RadAway.”

Clara bites her lip; it’s not quantifying her marriage, putting a value on the love she and Nate had shared. It’s a sacrifice for Shaun, and it’s necessary and –

“They have to be worth a little more than that, Solomon,” Clara says, pushing through the bile that’s welling up at the back of her throat. “Come on.” She musters up the sweetest smile she can manage and when he still looks skeptical, Clara purses her lips as best she can and looks up at him through her eyelashes (or tries; Clara hadn’t been tall before the war, but radiation seems to have shrunk everyone a couple of inches). “For me?”

Solomon smirks back at her. He knows exactly what she’s trying to do, but Clara hopes that doesn’t mean that it isn’t working. “I can give you 250 for each, then, but no more, and only because you didn’t stick a gun down my throat to try to get a better price.”

Emotions war, but it’s a more than fair price and… her marriage was over long before that. Clara’s fingertips wail as she pushes the band that Solomon hadn’t been examining towards them, trying not to let her touch linger on them too long for fear of changing her mind.

Murder dissolved her marriage, yes, but as she walks towards the center of town with her arms full of radiation medicine, sliding it into her pack as she looks for a rendezvous with Deacon, losing the bands feel very much like a divorce.

Worst of all, it feels like it should hurt much more than it does. The tears she’s fighting aren’t for Nate, not really. They’re tears over not missing Nate enough.

She swallows the lump in her throat because Deacon is there waiting for her in the middle of town. He smiles at her, and Clara smiles back on instinct rather than because she’s obligated. Taking the seat next to him, Deacon pushes one of the two bowls towards her before digging into his.

“You didn’t start without me?” Clara asks, and Deacon shakes his head.

“Figured if you were going to eat yours cold, I might as well do the same.”

“G-glutton for punishment,” Clara laughs, and it feels light in her gut. Deacon shrugs and gives her a more somber answer than she’s expecting.

“You’re not the first person to say that.”

* * *

 

No one in the Commonwealth has been so happy to see Clara as Jack Cabot is to see Lucy – and Deacon as Jackson, of course, but Clara can’t speak for him.

Before they’d gone in, Clara had positioned herself to knock and Deacon had stopped her. “They’re civilized, Lucy, not us,” he says with a wink, and brushes past her to push the door open without fanfare. Her cheeks burn, embarrassed at being caught out as old-fashioned again, but she follows him nonetheless.

Jack swears loudly before he notices them, and his mother, Wilhelmina, is the one who points them out first. “Thank God you’re here,” Jack says, and Clara lets her eyes wander longingly to the piano in the corner as his attentions are fully entrained on Deacon. “I need you to meet me at the asylum. There’s been a breach.”

“There has to be something of value there for there to be a breach,” Deacon says, and Jack scowls. Deacon shrugs and tosses a look over his shoulder at Clara. “We were looking for work anyway, weren’t we, Luce?”

Clara tries on a smirk that she hopes is confident. “I’m not too picky. Work is negotiable; it’s just caps I’m looking for.”

Jack sighs, looking between them, and Clara thinks she gets glimpses of his thought process – she and Deacon are rough around the edges, but they’ve gotten the job done so far.

“Understand you’re being paid for your discretion,” Jack says, and Deacon gives him a toothy smile. “When we get to the asylum, you’re to follow my every instruction to the letter, no questions asked.”

Clara flattens her hand and draws her feet together before pulling it to the crown of her head, a mockery of a salute. Deacon chuckles at her, and Jack rolls his eyes. “You’re being paid for your discretion,” Jack repeats, “But your punctuality is also appreciated.”

With that, Wilhelmina ascends the stairs and Jack makes his exit.

Deacon looks to her for their next move, and Clara stands absently before flicking a final look at the piano.

“If Jack Cabot were to die humanely on this job, I could take his piano back to Sanctuary,” she says finally, and Deacon’s mouth forms an ‘o’ of surprise before a grin spreads over her face. “Just kidding,” Clara continues, “But the thought has crossed my mind more than once.”

“What’s the difference between the piano Jack Cabot’s got and the one back at Sanctuary?” Deacon asks, and Clara makes a noise that’s close to a scoff.

“A Steinway is…” her voice trails off. “I don’t know if I have the English for it. The peak of craftsmanship? I guess. I’d only ever seen them before, and even then only a couple times, much less played one.”

Deacon nods, and shifts his rifle ever so slightly. “It looks like we’ve got a date with the asylum, Luce.”

She motions towards the door. “After you.”

It’s not any of Deacon’s business that she sold both rings, but she wants to tell him. It isn’t that easy to work it into conversation though, and if he asks her why she’s telling him, Clara doesn’t think she’ll really be able to scrounge up a reason.

There isn’t any more time to think about it because Deacon’s set off for the asylum. Clara jogs to catch up, and then falls into stride beside him.

* * *

 

The Cabot family is… so fucked up. The world is fucked, of course, so it’s no surprise, but the Cabots set a whole new record for _fucked_ the _fuck_ up.

Jack Cabot is cowering in the corner of the Parsons State Insane Asylum’s basement as raiders surround them from all sides. Atlas is, well – Atlas is pissed.

Lorenzo Cabot, for his part, is causing quite a racket in a heavily fortified cage.

“You can’t let them release him,” Jack says, and he’s practically whispering. “There’s no telling what he’ll do if you let them release him. This world – no one would be able to stop him-”

“ _For helvede,”_ Atlas says, certainly a swear in her native tongue or something similar, laying fire on one of the raiders before turning to Deacon. “There’s four of them,” she says, “We can take them, and then we’ll figure out what we’re doing with Lorenzo.”

“Weren’t you _listening_?” Jack hisses, “He _cannot_ be allowed to leave. The destruction would be catastrophic-”

Atlas cuts him off with a glare, reloading Deliverer and never breaking eye contact. Deacon’s thankful for that. There’s been plenty of blathering about the artifact and knowledge to pass on.

“I’m getting the impression you’re not calling the shots right now, Mr. Cabot, with all due respect,” Deacon says with a dark grin, and Atlas spares him a chuckle in a matching tone.

“You said you had to open the doors as we make it down the hallway,” Atlas says, “Start opening them.”

They make quick work of all but one of the raiders, the last one so hopped up on some chem that he seems totally unfazed despite the fact that Deacon has watched Atlas pound a full magazine of bullets in his general direction.

Atlas shakes her head and gets a look in her eye that Deacon identifies as the very image of someone about to do something very stupid.

Rolling out of cover, Atlas sprints. The raider must not have been expecting that, because he laughs, and in the split-second it takes him to gain perspective on her position, Atlas is leaping at him, boot-knife in hand. She plunges the blade into his neck, and she has to do it twice more before the raider finally falls to the ground with a thud. Blood mats her hair; that had been a positive of having it tied back, Deacon muses, and he chances a glance at Jack Cabot, petrified and wide-eyed through the glass.

“Set the generators,” he says, just loud enough to be heard and sounding all too defeated. “I’ll finish this.”

Deacon’s impressed, but he shouldn’t be. Atlas doesn’t even think of making a deal with Lorenzo, setting three of the generators and pausing before the third. “This is the right choice, right?” she asks, and Deacon thinks she’s talking to him but he can’t be sure when Atlas doesn’t bother to look up.

“Eh,” Deacon says, shrugging like the idea of letting Lorenzo Cabot free into the Commonwealth doesn’t chill him to the bone. “Your moral compass is stronger than mine.”

“ _Det ved jeg ikke_ ,” she mumbles, and it sounds like doubt in her voice but not necessarily over killing Lorenzo Cabot before she pulls the final lever.

Jack floods the chamber with something that he guarantees will kill Lorenzo but not harm them. In the interim, Deacon asks, “What does that mean? What you said?”

He’s fully aware that the number of questions he’s asked Atlas can be counted on one hand. “ _Det ved jeg ikke?”_ she repeats, and when he nods in confirmation, she says, “It means ‘I don’t know.’”

Deacon stretches as Jack opens the first of the doors necessary to release them. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, boss. No one out there is going to miss Lorenzo Cabot, and you aren’t going to remember this next week when we’re up to our necks in radiation in the Glowing Sea.”

Their boots clank on the metal floor, silent but for that sound and the buzzing of the lights overhead. Atlas looks pensive for a moment before looking at him, big sad eyes wide open and staring into him like she can see right through the sunglasses and into his heart. The look is so effective that Deacon has to physically stop himself from taking a step back, and even though he manages that, he does still lean away from her. Atlas takes a step towards him and closes the gap between them, squinting analytically, and it’s the first time Deacon’s ever wished he was any taller.

“What makes you think I’m taking you with me to the Glowing Sea?” Atlas asks, raising an eyebrow and managing to keep a straight face for only a second longer before she cracks into a smile, waiting for his answer.

Deacon exhales, not really having realized he was holding his breath. “Well believe me,” he smirks, “It’s not the kind of assignment I’d take on for just any girl I’d pick up at the Third Rail, so I’ll let Glory know you’re looking for help.”

Atlas smiles once more and laughs, small but genuinely, before continuing back down the hallway. Deacon starts after her but stays a step or two behind, unable to rid himself of the smile adorning his own face.

She’s full of surprises, his Atlas, Deacon thinks, and just as he’s getting ready to reprimand himself for the line of thought, his eye catches on her left hand, the one conspicuously missing a wedding ring these days.

No, she’s not his Atlas, but she’s not anybody’s at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you'll find me @kellexofficial on tumblr nowadays. thank you for reading <3
> 
> ps very sorry i didn't answer you in the comments if i don't go to sleep i might die


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